CSPs' business strategies should also take customer quality of service expectations into consideration, which will vary by service type and bandwidth availability. They should also give customers the flexibility to define their service options and set the parameters around which their services will operate, such as time-of-day, day-of-week, credit constraints or balance levels. Lastly, they should bear in mind that enacting service usage and/or control restrictions without customer agreement can result in dissatisfaction—or worse—in the long haul.
Rising Hope with Policy-Based Customer Management
Greater attention to better bandwidth management is critical if CSPs are to keep customer satisfaction, resources and long-term business sustainability in check. It's also needed as the world becomes more connected—and traffic volumes increase several levels beyond what is used today.
Greater attention to better bandwidth management is critical if CSPs are to keep customer satisfaction, resources and long-term business sustainability in check.
be implemented without a way to calculate user allocation limits tied to level of spend, download value or credit acceptability. An end-to-end, policy-enabled customer satisfaction management strategy can be fully realized when working collectively with a real-time rating and charging engine, to implement the price-based service options, such as dynamic bundles, defined spending limits and even advertising subsidization.
Real-time charging was talked about three to four years ago as critical for operators' competitive differentiation. Today, bringing these components together to address
Meanwhile, shifting responsibility so that customers become more in control of their bandwidth consumption—whether through offering choices in how plans are priced or through usage limits—offers a viable alternative.
Effective, customer-focused policy management should involve three components: a customer usage identification (or deep packet inspection) and data collection function, to understand what types of services customers are using; a policy definition and management function, to enable both operators and customers to customize how a pricing package is consumed or a service is accessed; and a policy enforcement function, to carry out defined policy rules. These functions work interactively, but many policy options cannot
customer-focused policy requirements is largely new for the industry, but essential for meeting customer concerns and for addressing long-term business objectives. Real-time charging coupled with usage control, for example, is enabling CSPs to monetize certain network investments, such as service delivery platforms, through more attractive customer service offerings that involve content from multiple sources.
Over the past two years, a small but growing number of CSPs from across the globe initiated business strategies involving policy management integrated with real-time rating and charging. Nearly all are now experiencing increased differentiation, more flexibility in their service offering capabilities and improved customer satisfaction—customers have more ways to match the service offerings with their
Pipeline
Publishing, Volume 6, Issue 10
