The Next Level - VoIP User Quality Management

Service Quality Management (SQM) has become a necessity as VoIP providers today become increasingly challenged with several all-too-familiar issues: customer perception is not easily determined; most reported problems are post-event and go unsolved; intermittent equipment issues take a long time to pinpoint and resolve; and lastly, a majority of in-home equipment and infrastructure issues go undetected. As such, most mature and market-sophisticated service providers have placed service quality management (SQM) as the top market differentiator when offering new VoIP services.

However, the traditional SQM concept of monitoring from a network perspective is giving way to the more evolved concept of UQM (User Quality Management). UQM is the next level in management, extending service management and monitoring to the end-user experience-- monitoring in real-time the actual customer experience, not just within the core, to the ‘edge’ or across the network, but down to the actual users in their homes, offices, or anywhere they might be. Distinct differences in the service assurance level of UQM vs. SQM set them apart, and it won’t be long before UQM becomes a key mantra in the executive offices of service providers around the globe.

The Need for Managing Service Quality at the Customer Level
While managing the underlying network components and services are critical, it’s all moot if your users experience poor quality calls. The key word here is “experience.” If a user picks up the phone and doesn’t get a dial tone, or makes a call and hears an echo, low volume, or choppy speech, the user is going to form a negative opinion about the phone service at the time. It doesn’t matter that there were no problems reported on the network, that a hundred other users made calls at the same time with no issues, or that someone was downloading several new mp3s for their iPod and caused network congestion. If you’re lucky, the user will complain and you will be able to log a ticket and research the error. More likely, the user will just form a negative opinion of the service, use it less, and not complain until he or she has experienced a number of problems with a clear and demonstrable effect on productivity. Only then will you get a complaint, and there won’t be exact times and dates attached as much as an understandable dissatisfaction and unhappiness with the service. Worst case scenario: you lose your customer and they complain to 15 other people (a marketing average for poor service quality).

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