B/OSS World: CEM Must Be Driven From Top Down, Experts Say

Delivering on the value of customer experience management starts at the top, according to panelists talking about CEM at the Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo Tuesday. Specifically, they stressed the importance of organizational change.

“If it were a software solution, it would be done,” said Cathal McGloin, vice president of sales – Americas for Arantech. But, it’s not; it’s about people and process, he added.

Kelly Owens St. Julian, vice president of customer management for Boost Mobile, agreed. “You have to integrate customer-centricity throughout the organization,” she said, noting that means changing organizational performance metrics to tie to customer- centricity.

The biggest challenge for service providers is historically they have been driven by managing networks, said McGloin. Now, they need to add the customer view, he said.

Most service providers, however, aren’t quite at that step, noted Scott Sobers, program director – marketing for service provider solutions at IBM. In addition to monitoring whether the network is up and running, they now are monitoring whether the service is up and running. The next step is to get to the customer level, he said.

What can frustrate that step is access to the information. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, but artificial organizational boundaries can prevent its utilization, he said, circling back to the need for top-down organizational imperatives. “Service providers don’t lack information. It’s making it useful [that’s the challenge]. For them, it’s a culture change.”

“We get in the way of ourselves,” agreed Raj Rao, solutions partner, EMC Consulting, noting that silos as well as politics often are to blame.

McGloin said service providers need to pull the information – which exists in the billing and network management systems -- and give it a customer dimension.

Owens St. Julian said it’s important to invest in a platform that is flexible so that it can evolve as customer needs and wants evolve. She cautioned against complacency. What customers want is a moving target, she said.

Defining the Customer Experience

Owens St. Julian said customer experience covers everything from awareness through loyalty. McGloin agreed, citing examples of customer interactions such as buying, using and billing.

Rao added that it also has to do with expectations set by marketing and branding. The promise you make to your customers must be fulfilled at every interaction point, he said.

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