What are the key drivers for successful CEM transformation? In 2012, Huawei cooperated with Informa to initiate a research project to enable us to understand the drivers for CEM and the importance from an operator’s perspective. It came as no surprise that retention & loyalty/churn consistently ranked the highest.

But after reviewing the results it became abundantly clear that the key drivers varied greatly depending on the positioning of the operator’s CEM vision & strategy.

From excellent network experience to superior service quality experience

Although the concept of CEM was developed to address the shortcomings of a pure Network KPI approach, a successful customer centric operation can only be assured if the network experience is already at an excellent level. Therefore Network & Service Quality Improvement is the initial and critical phase required for a successful implementation of a CEM solution.

Once the operator has achieved at least a satisfactory network level experience they are in a position to begin Service Quality Management activities. The service quality management must be based on an E2E Per Service Per User (PSPU) KQI system. This system can monitor both in service and customer care quality, demarcate problems and accurately determine the root causes. As a result of this evaluation process an optimization plan can be provided to enable superior service experience.

From superior service experience to superior customer lifecycle experience

Different from Superior Service Experience which only focuses on customer’s experience in the phase of Use, Superior Customer Lifecycle Experience requires a holistic approach to customer experience lifecycle--become aware & select, buy, use, pay, get help and loyalty. Operator will require the support of a Customer Experience Consulting team to guide and support them through the various challenges they will encounter. The first step in defining the customer experience is Journey Mapping. This is simply illustrating the steps and metrics a customer goes through when interacting with the operator. There is an extensive list of industry defined metrics but the ability to customize the metrics for an individual operator will be a key factor in the successful CEM. The successful operator will be the one that capitalizes not only on the expertise of their CEM partner but also maintains their primary focus on their specific metrics that are impacting their customer satisfaction.

Operation Consulting drives the successful CEM implementation for the consideration of efficient and effective service operation. It advises operators how to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and achieve operational Best Practices focused on improved end user satisfaction. This is accomplished by addressing four key areas. Business Process Management can dramatically impact the performance of any company and differentiate any organization from their competitor. Organization and Competence Management evaluates the staff competence and current organizational structures to ensure they align with the corporate goals. Operational Benchmarking provides a real time performance analysis that allows telecoms operators to compare their operations against their competitors.Change management facilitates the transition of individuals or teams within organizations from a current to a desired mode of operations.

Operators need to address the importance of properly managing and providing experience assurance from a total customer lifecycle viewpoint. It is critical to not only to consistently maintain their revenue through ongoing customer satisfaction but also ensure retention of the profitable customers. As mobile phone penetration increases in a market, the acquisition of new customers becomes increasing challenging. It is imperative that operators adapt experience assurance to up sell services as well as increase loyalty as this also has the added benefit of preventing an organization from wasting valuable time and money constantly acquiring potentially less profitable customers.

This also includes a dynamic and robust policy control process. There are many aspects to Policy control that include (1) the ability to accurately predict the impact of congestion, not only by location and device but also factor in data traffic spikes and demand anomalies (2) Optimize capacity by using proactive, customer-sensitive policy controls (3) cost-effectively address the challenges of managing network congestion, by adopting a targeted, congestion and application specific approach, or to put in a single term Experience Monetization.

Huawei understands that CEM is a holistic approach with business objectives to lead systems and process integration in a customer centric model, and success can only be assured with these all inclusive approaches.

This means that an effective CEM program is implemented with an understanding of the Customer Experience Lifecycle while incorporating the voice of the operator to provide a customized solution to meet the specific needs of the operator. In short there is not one “right” solution as each operator will face unique challenges to be successful and needs the guidance of a partner with global experience and specific expertise in the CEM area.