Power to the people

via customer calls rather than by alerts from addressed before they get out of hand. automated monitoring tools. To address this problem, CA Wily Technology

This lack of insight highlights a major prob- created solutions such as CA Wily Customer lem for service providers: Most of today’s Experience Manager (CEM) and CA Wily performance management solutions lack the Introscope^®, which provide wireline, wire- deep, real-time, end-to-end visibility neces- less and cable operators with unprecedented sary to solve problems that have begun to insight into the customer experience and the degrade the customer experience, let alone performance of applications. The proof is in identify root causes before they even develop the results: A survey of 10 CA Wily telecom into problems. As a result, not only are service customers found that they enjoyed a 75% providers effectively flying blind, but they also reduction in performance issues that affect have to devote more resources to identifying customers and a 60% reduction in the amount and correcting problems than if they could be of time resolving problems. g

 

Analyst Insight:

What are Customers

Really Experiencing?

>It is critical that the migration to cus- In Western Europe use is growing, but some tomer self-service doesn’t come at service providers still prefer direct interaction expense of visibility into application with a human agent. performance and the customer expe- Figueras: One estimate I have seen puts the rience. Peter Mottishaw, who is a senior analyst percentage of calls handled by IVR or the Web at OSS Observer, and Jessica Figueras, the at 95% for pre-paid subscribers and 50% for leader of the service infrastructure practice contract subscribers. The balance is almost all at Ovum, recently described some of the chal- human agents, plus a very small percentage for lenges that service providers face when balanc- the retail channel. ing CSS, SLAs and the customer experience.

^{Can automated systems actually provide more} Q:D Q^: insights and information about what customers _c o most service providers now field a lot of _{ustomer care inquiries via Web portals and are experiencing than human agents can?} IVR systems? Figueras: The irony is that managers within

Mottishaw: In mature markets, such as North service provider care teams often do have a America and Western Europe, labor costs are very good understanding of what the real cus- high and the services are complex, so there is tomer experience is like, but they have little hard a good business case for automating customer data to back up their hunches and therefore interaction with Web portals and IVR systems. face difficulty in making the business case for We see rapid growth in the use of the systems in investment to senior management. North America, particularly for mobile services. Automated systems should be able to provide