July 2012

Versatile, Portable & Corrections-Savvy: Quest for the Swiss Army Knife of Revenue Assurance Software

by Mark Yelland

Revenue assurance maturity: perhaps it’s time for that concept to mature as well.

talkRA’s Eric Priezkalns and the TM Forum have both developed models for assessing the maturity of RA organizations. Independently, colleague David Sherick and I came up with our own Five Dimensional Model of Revenue Assurance -- yet another maturity guide.

But our conception of what the RA practice is about moves on. And that’s a healthy change that advances our art. As for myself, I find the more client engagements I have, the more insights I gain, and a few contracts later certain RA problems or functions loom much larger and more significant than I formerly thought.

One area I think we maturity modelers have failed to shine enough light on is corrections. Finding revenue leaks is wonderful stuff, but we also need to implement fixes to correct the historical issue and reduce the chance of further errors.

So in this column, I’d like to examine this area of RA corrections a bit.

Manual Processes: The Key Challenge of Corrections

RA problem identification and corrections are really two sides of the same coin.

On the mobile side, one of the standard reconciliations is between the HLR, the contract and the billing system. Over the years, RA departments have gotten pretty efficient at identifying the discrepancies, but the manual fixes to these problems are another story. Wouldn‘t it be handy to have an automated tool that could accurately make changes to the CRM, HLR / IN and Sales Order Systems?

On the fixed side, with leased circuits, one of the standard leakage measurement points is ensuring that network inventory matches what was ordered by customers. And finding mismatches leads to many areas of potential correction: fixing incorrect invoices; modifying facility orders, and making changes to recover stranded assets.

These mobile and fixed examples actually share much in common. Both situations call for comparing two different data sets and correcting one or another without introducing any further errors.

So what is the most likely source of correction those errors? You guessed it: the manual entry phase, whether it’s the classic mistyping of numbers, lack of training, people being hurried, or users just getting bored or distracted.

Why are So Many Systems Still Stuck in Manual Drive?

For years, we’ve recognized that manual systems are the source of so many data integrity problems, but our industry never seems to tackle this problem.

Walk through your various business processes, Prospect to Cash, Network Management, and so on, and see many local databases and spreadsheets in use. Why? Well, mainly because people do not consider the original source data to be accurate or fit for their purpose. At this point, you can begin to see one of the new challenges for RA: identifying sources of accurate data and ensuring that their accuracy is maintained.

Be honest — how many of you are seeing new manual billing processes sprouting up in your organisation? Quite a few of you, I suspect. When an innovative product or service is produced, marketing exerts pressure to get the product launched, and they are simply not going to let billing automation delay their time table. The result? Manual billing becomes an ugly, but necessary expedient.

This was certainly the case during the early days of GPRS — which is why the service was often given away for free. It was also the case for MMS back in the dark days, and I suspect that today’s advanced LTE services are also getting deployed faster because the invoicing is being handled manually.

Yet, as we all know, manual invoicing is manageable when you have only 10 subscribers, but as soon as the subscriber count mushrooms into the hundreds or thousands, it becomes unwieldy. Unfortunately, management usually finds more pressing things to spend its budget on than billing automation.

On the RA side, there is always the requirement to recalculate the bill. Sure, the tariffs need to be checked. But there other reasons, too. The Sales department wants to show the savings that would have been earned by a potential client. Sometimes the customer is on the wrong bundle so Customer Services needs to recalculate the bill with the correct bundle to calculate the credit. This simple kind of automation would benefit any number of departments.

Ah, but there’s a catch: the problem is usually not considered of sufficient weight or priority to warrant a project And since it was not part of the initial planning process, there’s no budget for it anyway. The other stumbling block is IT. Automated -- or even semi-automated -- interfaces into mission critical BSS and OSS systems raise a red flag. What if they should cause a system crash? Effectively, this means IT will never give you free reign in the design. Oh, and IT has neither the time nor budget to work on your project. In other words, good luck.

Fantasies of an All-Purpose Revenue Assurance Gadget

I have no simple solution for the problems I’ve just described. And since I’m not a software developer, I can only point to the usefulness of such a solution, but cannot build it on my own.

Yet from an RA Consultant’s perspective, wouldn‘t it be cool if you could walk into an organisation, look at any one of their problems, and deliver a solution within the normal timeframe of your contract? And wouldn’t it be nice if that solution was affordable and versatile enough that you could apply it to other areas as well?

Hence we arrive at the notion of a “Swiss Army Knife” RA solution. For those of you who don‘t know the name, the Swiss Army Knife is a portable all-purpose gadget made by Victorinox that comes with a wide range of tools folded into the body. There is a knife, but you can also get a pair of scissors, a file, a screwdriver — the high tech version even comes with an USB drive. In short, it’s a device to tackle many small jobs and that anyone can use.

So what would this RA Swiss Army Knife look like? Well, here’s a quick list of the functionality I’m looking for:

RA Analyst Friendly -- The tool should be simple to configure and maintain using the skills of a competent, but trained, RA Analyst.
Easy Data Loading and Extracting — It should be simple to interface to different systems to extract or input data across a variety of formats.
Versatile in Deployment -- The software should be designed to address a few problems in one area but be flexible enough to be used in another part of the process chain. In one department it will help reduce the error rate by fixing a process. In another, it will manage provisioning. In still another, it will re-rate customer invoices.
Suggests the Corrections -- Not only will the tool run the analysis and identify errors, it should also suggest what fixes are appropriate -- which once given the go-ahead, are then implemented. NOTE: I am not a fan of auto-fix solutions where the system decides what is wrong and automatically makes the changes. I prefer to have control over the proposed fix before it’s implemented and -- if necessary -- do some secondary checks.
Relatively IT Free -- The tool should not require extensive IT support or maintenance. Once you have the buy-in from one department, others can see how the approach works and will recognise how something similar can work for them.
Low Cost and Quick-to-Deploy -- Small operators especially need quick-to-deploy, lightweight systems. These come from firms such as CxB solutions and more recently, CenterView, or self-built tools using either SQL or programs such as ACL, MS Access or MS Excel. These systems are generally either designed in-house or with the aid of an independent consultancy such as my firm, raaiim. We need the same speed of deployment in systems that not only identify the errors but also have the ability to perform the fixes.
Cross Industry Application -- Ideally, the solution should be flexible enough that it can even be used in, say, the utility industry or another one outside of telecom. This would be a natural evolution since the rationale and approach would be the same, though the systems would be different.

Conclusion

So, where do I get one of these tools? I wish I knew. The elements of such a multi-purpose tool are certainly available from the many software vendors serving our market, but pulling together a unified tool is probably a long ways off.

Yet the benefits are tantalizing. It could dramatically reduce the number of unrecognized errors and substantially lower an organization’s revenue risks.

NOTE: For further reading here, I suggest an excellent free book excerpt entitled, “Thirteen causes of enterprise data quality problems” by Arkady Maydanchik.

Mark Yelland

Mark Yelland has been working in the revenue assurance and fraud space for over 20 years. For the last five, he has run a small consultancy firm, RAAIIM, targeting the smaller and newer operators, helping them get started or improve their revenue leakage and risk management. Showing them what can be achieved with minimal spend — getting more out of their existing systems, or developing tools using open-source products.

Like all engineers, he enjoys solving problems of all types, trying to find elegant, cost effective and simple solutions to big problems. His engineering training comes from the degree course at Cambridge University and his business skills come from the Open University MBA. Contact Mark via

Black Swan Solution Guides & Papers

Expanding the Scope of Revenue Assurance Beyond Switch-to-Bill’s Vision — Araxxe — How Araxxe’s end-to-end revenue assurance complements switch-to-bill RA through telescope RA (external and partner data) and microscope RA (high-definition analysis of complex services like bundling and digital services).
Lanck Telecom FMS: Voice Fraud Management as a Network Service on Demand — Lanck Telecom — A Guide to a new and unique on-demand network service enabling fraud-risky international voice traffic to be monitored (and either alerted or blocked) as that traffic is routed through a wholesaler on its way to its final destinations.
SHAKEN / STIR Calling Number Verification & Fraud Alerting — iconectiv — SHAKEN/STIR is the telecom industry’s first step toward reviving trust in business telephony — and has recently launched in the U.S. market. This Solution Guide features commentary from technology leaders at iconetiv, a firm heavily involved in the development of SHAKEN.
Getting Accurate, Up-to-the-Minute Phone Number Porting History & Carrier-of-Record Data to Verify Identity & Mitigate Account Takeovers — iconectiv — Learn about a recently approved risk intelligence service to receive authoritative and real-time notices of numbers being ported and changes to the carrier-of-record for specific telephone numbers.
The Value of an Authoritative Database of Global Telephone Numbers — iconectiv — Learn about an authoritative database of allocated numbers and special number ranges in every country of the world. The expert explains how this database adds value to any FMS or fraud analyst team.
The IPRN Database and its Use in IRSF & Wangiri Fraud Control — Yates Fraud Consulting — The IPRN Database is a powerful new tool for helping control IRSF and Wangiri frauds. The pioneer of the category explains the value and use of the IPRN Database in this 14-page Black Swan Solution Guide.
A Real-Time Cloud Service to Protect the Enterprise PBX from IRSF Fraud — Oculeus — Learn how a new cloud-based solution developed by Oculeus, any enterprise can protect its PBX from IRSF fraud for as little as $5 a month.
How Regulators can Lead the Fight Against International Bypass Fraud — LATRO Services — As a regulator in a country infected by SIM box fraud, what can you do to improve the situation? A white paper explains the steps you can and should you take — at the national government level — to better protect your country’s tax revenue, quality of communications, and national infrastructure.
Telecom Identity Fraud 2020: A 36-Expert Analysis Report from TRI — TRI — TRI releases a new research report on telecom identity fraud and security. Black Swan readers can download a free Executive Summary of the Report.
The 2021 State of Communications-Related Fraud, Identity Theft & Consumer Protection in the USA — iconectiv — This 49-page free Report on communications-related fraud analyzes the FTC’s annual Sentinel consumer fraud statistics and provides a sweeping view of trends and problem areas. It also gives a cross-industry view of the practices and systems that enable fraud control, identity verification, and security in our “zero trust” digital world.

cSwans of a Feather

The Revenue Assurance Game: How the Rules Change in the Era of IoT & Mobile Broadband — interview with Rene Felber & Gadi Solotorevsky — Revenue assurance is perhaps the hardest of telecom functions to define because the term is used in so many different senses. This discussion on the evolving role of revenue assurance was catalyzed by a survey of experts in the profession.
Day in the Life of a Revenue Assurance Analyst — interview with Michael Lazarou — Revenue assurance is much more than a software category. It’s individual analysts struggling to help their larger organizations get a handle on system errors and coordination problems. In this interview, an analyst reveals the many challenges of getting the revenue assurance job done at a small GSM operator in Europe.
Revenue Assurance: History and New Beginnings in RA Maturity — interview with Daniela Giacomantonio & Gadi Solotorevsky — The Roman Forum was the center of commercial life in ancient Rome. Now, two millennia later, the Forum lives on in the exchange of ideas across countless professions and media. In this interview, two Revenue Assurance experts discuss both the new RA Maturity initiative of the TM Forum and the value of telco/solution vendor collaboration.
Versatile, Portable & Corrections-Savvy: Quest for the Swiss Army Knife of Revenue Assurance Software — by Mark Yelland — Revenue assurance maturity models are not cast in stone. Since best practices will change over time, it’s healthy to explore moving maturity models forward. For example, great gains have been made in leakage detection, but RA corrections has been harder to master. The author dreams about seven functions that should ideally come together in a single all-purpose revenue assurance software tool.
Revenue Assurance Maturity: Report From the Arena — interview with Eric Nelson — Revenue assurance maturity can‘t be easily computed. How do you compare the KPIs of Comcast billing with that of mobile money RA in Western Africa? Even still, this article offers some universal RA wisdom from a straight-shooting veteran of carriers large and small. Topics discussed include: dashboard or process, COTS vs. inhouse solutions, and tips on gaining internal support for the RA practice.

Tokopedia, Indonesia’s E-Commerce King, Partners with 11 Million Merchants; Adopts Multi-Cloud to Drive Innovation — interview with Warren Aw & Ryan de Melo — Indonesia’s Tokopedia, founded in 2009, has grown to become one of world’s leading e-commerce players. Read about its success, technology direction, and multi-cloud connectivity adoption.
Bridge Alliance: Knocking Down Regional & Mobile Connectivity Barriers so Connected Car Markets Get Rolling in Asia — interview with Kwee Kchwee — The CEO of an Asian consortium of mobile operators explains how they help simplify and harmonize their members‘ operations in support of multi-national corporations. This integration is enabling two huge industries to come together in Asia: auto manufacturing and telco.
Epsilon’s Infiny NaaS Platform Brings Global Connection, Agility & Fast Provision for IoT, Clouds & Enterprises in Southeast Asia, China & Beyond — interview with Warren Aw — Network as a Service, powered by Software Defined Networks, are a faster, more agile, and more partner-friendly way of making data global connections. A leading NaaS provider explains the benefits for cloud apps, enterprise IT, and IoT.
PCCW Global: On Leveraging Global IoT Connectivity to Create Mission Critical Use Cases for Enterprises — interview with Craig Price — A leading wholesale executive explains the business challenges of the current global IoT scene as it spans many spheres: technical, political, marketing, and enterprise customer value creation.
Senet’s Cloud & Shared Gateways Drive LoRaWAN IoT Adoption for Enterprise Businesses, Smart Cities & Telecoms — interview with Bruce Chatterley — An IoT netowork pioneer explains how LoRaWAN tech fits in the larger IoT ecosystem. He gives use case examples, describes deployment restraints/costs, and shows how partnering, gateway sharing, and flexible deployment options are stimulating growth.
ARM Data Center Software’s Cloud-Based Network Inventory Links Network, Operations, Billing, Sales & CRM to One Database — interview with Joe McDermott & Frank McDermott — A firm offering a cloud-based network inventory system explains the virtues of: a single underlying database, flexible conversions, task-checking workflow, new software business models, views that identify stranded assets, and connecting to Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Pure Play NFV: Lessons Learned from Masergy’s Virtual Deployment for a Global Enterprise — interview with Prayson Pate — NFV is just getting off the ground, but one cloud provider to enterprises making a stir in virtual technology waters is Masergy. Here are lessons learned from Masergy’s recent global deployment using a NFV pure play software approach.
The Digital Enabler: A Charging, Self-Care & Marketing Platform at the Core of the Mobile Business — interview with Jennifer Kyriakakis — The digital enabler is a central platform that ties together charging, self-care, and marketing. The article explains why leading operators consider digital enablers pivotal to their digital strategies.
Delivering Service Assurance Excellence at a Reduced Operating Cost — interview with Gregg Hara — The great diversity and complexity of today’s networks make service assurance a big challenge. But advances in off-the-shelf software now permit the configuring and visualizing of services across multiple technologies on a modest operating budget.
Are Cloud-Based Call Centers the Next Hot Product for the SMB Market? — interview with Doron Dovrat — Quality customer service can improve a company’s corporate identity and drive business growth. But many SMBs are priced out of acquiring modern call center technology. This article explains the benefits of affordable and flexible cloud-based call centers.
Flexing the OSS & Network to Support the Digital Ecosystem — interview with Ken Dilbeck — The need for telecoms to support a broader digital ecosystem requires an enormous change to OSS infrastructures and the way networks are being managed. This interview sheds light on these challenges.
Crossing the Rubicon: Is it Time for Tier Ones to Move to a Real-Time Analytics BSS? — interview with Andy Tiller — Will tier one operators continue to maintain their quilt works of legacy and adjunct platforms — or will they radically transform their BSS architecture into a new system designed to address the new telecom era? An advocate for radical transformation discusses: real-time analytics, billing for enterprises, partnering mashups, and on-going transformation work at Telenor.
Paradigm Shift in OSS Software: Network Topology Views via Enterprise-Search — interview with Benedict Enweani — Enterprise-search is a wildly successful technology on the web, yet its influence has not yet rippled to the IT main stream. But now a large Middle Eastern operator has deployed a major service assurance application using enterprise-search. The interview discusses this multi-dimensional topology solution and compares it to traditional network inventory.
The Multi-Vendor MPLS: Enabling Tier 2 and 3 Telecoms to Offer World-Class Networks to SMBs — interview with Prabhu Ramachandran — MPLS is a networking technology that has caught fire in the last decade. Yet the complexity of MPLS has relegated to being mostly a large carrier solution. Now a developer of a multi-vendor MPLS solutions explains why the next wave of MPLS adoption will come from tier 2/3 carriers supporting SMB customers.
Enabling Telecoms & Utilities to Adapt to the Winds of Business Change — interview with Kirill Rechter — Billing is in the midst of momentous change. Its value is no longer just around delivering multi-play services or sophisticated rating. In this article you’ll learn how a billing/CRM supplier has adapted to the times by offering deeper value around the larger business issues of its telecom and utility clients.
Driving Customer Care Results & Cost Savings from Big Data Facts — interview with Brian Jurutka — Mobile broadband and today’s dizzying array of app and network technology present a big challenge to customer care. In fact, care agents have a hard time staying one step ahead of customers who call to report problems. But network analytics comes to the rescue with advanced mobile handset troubleshooting and an ability to put greater intelligence at the fingertips of highly trained reps.
Hadoop and M2M Meet Device and Network Management Systems — interview with Eric Wegner — Telecom big-data in networks is more than customer experience managment: it’s also about M2M plus network and element management systems. This interview discusses the explosion in machine-to-machine devices, the virtues and drawbacks of Hadoop, and the network impact of shrink-wrapped search.
The Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Boom: Is Your Sales/Engineering Team Equipped to Win? — by Dan Baker — The build-out of enterprise clouds and data centers is a golden opportunity for systems integrators, carriers, and cloud providers. But the firms who win this business will have sales and engineering teams who can drive an effective and streamlined requirements-to-design-to-order process. This white paper points to a solution — a collaborative solution designs system — and explains 8 key capabilities of an ideal platform.
Big Data: Is it Ready for Prime Time in Customer Experience Management? — interview with Thomas Sutter — Customer experience management is one of the most challenging of OSS domains and some suppliers are touting “big data” solutions as the silver bullet for CEM upgrades and consolidation. This interview challenges the readiness of big data soluions to tackle OSS issues and deliver the cost savings. The article also provides advice on managing technology risks, software vendor partnering, and the strategies of different OSS suppliers.
Calculated Risk: The Race to Deliver the Next Generation of LTE Service Management — interview with Edoardo Rizzi — LTE and the emerging heterogeneous networks are likely to shake up the service management and customer experience management worlds. Learn about the many new network management challenges LTE presents, and how a small OSS software firm aims to beat the big established players to market with a bold new technology and strategy.
Decom Dilemma: Why Tearing Down Networks is Often Harder than Deploying Them — interview with Dan Hays — For every new 4G LTE and IP-based infrastructure deployed, there typically a legacy network that’s been rendered obsolete and needs to be decommissioned. This article takes you through the many complexities of network decom, such as facilities planning, site lease terminations, green-safe equipment disposal, and tax relief programs.
Migration Success or Migraine Headache: Why Upfront Planning is Key to Network Decom — interview with Ron Angner — Shutting down old networks and migrating customers to new ones is among the most challenging activities a network operators does today. This article provides advice on the many network issues surrounding migration and decommissioning. Topics discussed include inventory reconciliation, LEC/CLEC coordination, and protection of customers in the midst of projects that require great program management skills.
Navigating the Telecom Solutions Wilderness: Advice from Some Veteran Mountaineers — interview with Al Brisard — Telecom solutions vendors struggle mightily to position their solutions and figure out what to offer next in a market where there’s considerable product and service crossover. In this article, a veteran order management specialist firm lays out its strategy for mixing deep-bench functional expertise with process consulting, analytics, and custom API development.
Will Telecoms Sink Under the Weight of their Bloated and Out-of-Control Product Stacks? — interview with Simon Muderack — Telecoms pay daily for their lack of product integration as they constantly reinvent product wheels, lose customer intelligence, and waste time/money. This article makes the case of an enterprise product catalog. Drawing on central catalog cases at a few Tier 1 operators, the article explains the benefits: reducing billing and provisioning costs, promoting product reuse, and smoothing operations.
Virtual Operator Life: Enabling Multi-Level Resellers Through an Active Product Catalog — interview with Rob Hill — The value of product distribution via virtual operators is immense. They enable a carrier to sell to markets it cannot profitably serve directly. Yet the need for greater reseller flexibility in the bundling and pricing of increasingly complex IP and cloud services is now a major channel barrier. This article explains what’s behind an innovative product catalog solution that doubles as a service creation environment for resellers in multiple tiers.
Telecom Blocking & Tackling: Executing the Fundamentals of the Order-to-Bill Process — interview with Ron Angner — Just as football teams need to be good at the basics of blocking and tackling, telecoms need to excel at their own fundamental skillset: the order-to-cash process. In this article, a leading consulting firm explains its methodology for taking operators on the path towards order-to-cash excellence. Issues discussed include: provisioning intervals; standardization and simplicity; the transition from legacy to improved process; and the major role that industry metrics play.
Wireline Act IV, Scene II: Packaging Network & SaaS Services Together to Serve SMBs — by John Frame — As revenue from telephony services has steadily declined, fixed network operators have scrambled to support VoIP, enhanced IP services, and now cloud applications. This shift has also brought challenges to the provisioning software vendors who support the operators. In this interview, a leading supplier explains how it’s transforming from plain ol‘ OSS software provider to packager of on-net and SaaS solutions from an array of third party cloud providers.
Telecom Merger Juggling Act: How to Convert the Back Office and Keep Customers and Investors Happy at the Same Time — interview with Curtis Mills — Billing and OSS conversions as the result of a merger are a risky activity as evidenced by famous cases at Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom. This article offers advice on how to head off problems by monitoring key operations checkpoints, asking the right questions, and leading with a proven conversion methodology.
Is Order Management a Provisioning System or Your Best Salesperson? — by John Konczal — Order management as a differentiator is a very new concept to many CSP people, but it’s become a very real sales booster in many industries. Using electronics retailer BestBuy as an example, the article points to several innovations that can — and are — being applied by CSPs today. The article concludes with 8 key questions an operator should ask to measure advanced order management progress.
NEC Takes the Telecom Cloud from PowerPoint to Live Customers — interview with Shinya Kukita — In the cloud computing world, it’s a long road from technology success to telecom busness opportunity. But this story about how NEC and Telefonica are partnering to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises shows the experience of early cloud adoption. Issues discussed in the article include: customer types, cloud application varieties, geographic region acceptance, and selling challenges.
Billing As Enabler for the Next Killer Business Model — interview with Scott Swartz — Facebook, cloud services, and Google Ads are examples of innovative business models that demand unique or non-standard billing techniques. The article shows how flexible, change-on-the-fly, and metadata-driven billing architectures are enabling CSPs to offer truly ground breaking services.
Real-Time Provisioning of SIM Cards: A Boon to GSM Operators — interview with Simo Isomaki — Software-controlled SIM card configuration is revolutionizing the activation of GSM phones. The article explains how dynamic SIM management decouples the selection of numbers/services and delivers new opportunities to market during the customer acquisition and intial provisoining phase.
A Cynic Converted: IN/Prepaid Platforms Are Now Pretty Cool — interview with Grant Lenahan — Service delivery platforms born in the IN era are often painted as inflexible and expensive to maintain. Learn how modern SDPs with protocol mediation, high availability, and flexible Service Creation Environments are delivering value for operators such as Brazil’s Oi.
Achieving Revenue Maximization in the Telecom Contact Center — interview with Robert Lamb — Optimizing the contact center offers one of the greatest returns on investment for a CSP. The director of AT&T’s contact center services business explains how telecoms can strike an “artful balance” between contact center investment and cost savings. The discussion draws from AT&T’s consulting with world class customers like Ford, Dell, Discover Financial, DISH Network, and General Motors.
Mobile Broadband: The Customer Service Assurance Challenge — interview with Michele Campriani — iPhone and Android traffic is surging but operators struggle with network congestion and dropping ARPUs. The answer? Direct resources and service quality measures to ensure VIPs are indeed getting the quality they expect. Using real-life examples that cut to the chase of technical complexities, this article explains the chief causes of service quality degradation and describes efficient ways to deal with the problem.
Telco-in-a-Box: Are Telecoms Back in the B/OSS Business? — interview with Jim Dunlap — Most telecoms have long since folded their merchant B/OSS software/services businesses. But now Cycle30, a subsidiary of Alaskan operator GCI, is offering a order-to-cash managed service for other operators and utilities. The article discusses the company’s unique business model and contrasts it with billing service bureau and licensed software approaches.
Bricks, Mortar & Well-Trained Reps Make a Comeback in Customer Management — interview with Scott Kohlman — Greater industry competition, service complexity, and employee turnover have raised the bar in the customer support. Indeed, complex services are putting an emphasis on quality care interactions in the store, on the web, and through the call center. In this article you’ll learn about innovations in CRM, multi-tabbed agent portals, call center agent training, customer treatment philosophies, and the impact of self-service.
21st Century Order Management: The Cross-Channel Sales Conversation — by John Konczal — Selling a mobile service is generally not a one-and-done transaction. It often involves several interactions — across the web, call center, store, and even kiosks. This article explains the power of a “cross-channel hub” which sits above all sales channels, interacts with them all, and allows a CSP to keep the sales conversation moving forward seamlessly.
Building a B/OSS Business Through Common Sense Customer Service — by David West — Delivering customer service excellence doesn‘t require mastering some secret technique. The premise of this article is that plain dealing with customers and employees is all that’s needed for a winning formula. The argument is spelling out in a simple 4 step methodology along with some practical examples.