Improving the Customer Experience: Profiting From Back-office Support (Cont'd)

sale, as it then allows retail staff to provide and demonstrate new services – just when the customer needs the most help and is very receptive to new ideas. It is vital that the service fulfillment systems have open interfaces that enable customer care and engineering staff to query, track and intervene in the order processing, so that customer inquiries can be dealt with quickly.

The second step is to create a unified process that manages the end-to-end network equipment, databases, and content platforms involved in service delivery. Often, a fragmented process is the result of back office systems sitting in silos that are not integrated. This leads to extended order processing times, inconsistencies, partially completed orders, and complex problem diagnosis and resolution – all adversely affecting customer satisfaction. Operators who intend to offer bundles of voice, data, and content need back office systems that can manage all network domains, from existing 2G voice and data through to IP multimedia platforms.

Finally, the benefit of harmonizing tariffs, customer service, and service delivery nationally and internationally is that customers are encouraged to roam onto subsidiary or affiliate networks, and are motivated to make more use of their services. The challenge for the operators is to implement the back office systems that can cost-effectively integrate to a wide variety of systems, enabling them to standardize product catalogs while still allowing local actions in response to competition.

Operators that successfully re-engineer their back office systems to achieve these improvements will enhance the customer service experience. Combined with the improving perception of 3G handsets and services, it will be an important step in making 3G desirable to all wireless users – and not a potentially misunderstood niche.

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