End-To-End Results
Operational Intelligence fosters end-to-end improvements across the full customer lifecycle, from the initial interaction, to new service activation, to the bill at the end of the month.
The customers' first experience sets the tone for their relationship with the service provider. With Operational Intelligence, the service activation or provisioning process can be optimized in real time. Problems can immediately be visualized, identified and mitigated. Activation requests from preferred partners can be prioritized. Activation errors can be automatically detected and predictably resolved through automated exception management, providing customers with a smooth on-boarding process.
Once a customer is active, quality of service is essential. Operational Intelligence provides real-time analytics on network performance and operations data, enabling service providers to prevent problems before they impact the customer. Usage patterns and location data can be proactively correlated with problem cells in the network to ensure issues are resolved before they're ever evident to a customer.
As a cursory search for #cableguy on Twitter will reveal, more than anything, customers hate to wait. Billing issues are the number one source of customer calls and complaints. Billing systems typically touch the customer twelve times per year. Operational Intelligence combines historical data from BSS/OSS systems with the holistic view of the customer to more rapidly resolve billing issues.
Summary
Operational Intelligence platforms enable CSPs to use the data generated on the network, in existing systems and from external channels, in exciting new ways to improve customer experience, reduce costs, and expose new revenue opportunities. A network-centric view afforded by traditional service assurance (standing by on alert for error alarms) might report a healthy network, but in the same instance, a customer-centric view delivered by Operational Intelligence can not only uncover customer experience problems, but also deliver the insight for the most appropriate course of action. As noted earlier, you can't fix what you can't see. To deliver a truly superlative customer experience, CSPs must look from the outside in, and Operational Intelligence is a cost-effective, quick-to-deploy solution.
