InFocus: Triple play or triple problems?

“IP-everywhere” is quickly becoming the norm in today’s digital home. It wasn’t long ago that a house had only one computer attached to a high-speed Internet connection. Over the past year we have found ourselves in the era of the home network, which has been primarily tasked with simply moving basic data between PCs and peripherals (e.g. printers, CD-burners, back-up drives, etc…). Now in 2005 we are in the midst of a consumer electronics revolution, where we are moving mulitimedia content like video and audio not only between our PCs, but our stereos, DVRs, TVs and DVDs. And as the bandwidth requirements have gone up, so has the technical complexity, especially with the emergence of new services like VoIP, IPTV and ever-increasing data speeds to the home. In fact, many homes now have more sophisticated network and technology requirements than your average business office. Ready or not, consumers are embracing the triple play.

It has been predicted that there will be more than 27 million VoIP subscribers in the US alone by 2009--a 900% increase from today--according to IDC, and 100 million home networks by 2007, according to Ovum. Installation and management of wired or wireless networks within a home or small business, reliable connectivity, consistent voice quality, clear video signal and 24x7 network access are placing higher demands for customer service quality on digital service providers (DSPs)--along with additional pressure to sustain profitable growth. Customer choices for VoIP, IPTV and high-speed data are both simple and complex: Three services. Multiple providers. And even more ways for things to go wrong.

But while the complexity has gone up, so has the opportunity for service providers. The “triple play” of voice, video and broadband services is not only a way to increase revenues, but also a way to increase customer loyalty to protect this new-found cash flow. According to a recent survey conducted by InsightExpress, an independent research firm, 66% of consumers surveyed felt that customer service would be improved if TV, telephone and data service were delivered by one company. A key problem for service providers in rolling out the triple play is the need to be able to help the customer set-up and manage their home multimedia network, so they can realize its full value while simultaneously doing so in a cost-effective way even in the face of increasing complexity.

Three ways to get it right--or wrong

An accelerator of broadband deployment has been the widespread adoption of automated installation. Put simply, automated installation consists of providing the customer with some equipment, a CD and instructions and letting them “self-install.” However, this simple approach won’t apply as advanced IP-based services like VoIP and IPTV are rolled out. Truth is, it’s more complicated than that. The quality of service requirements are much more stringent for these real-time “streaming” services than they are for data services, for which the order and timing of packet arrival is not as critical. Additionally, there are more features and options to configure to make sure the customer gets exactly the service they ordered. In short, just because a customer is connected doesn’t mean that the customer will get the quality of signal, consistent reliability or even the services they requested so that they need to fully utilize the new offering.

Service providers need to move from “installation automation” to “installation verification,” making sure that the customer is not just connected--but connected properly. Any solution that merely allows a customer to install their service without checking the quality of their connection is not good enough. The tools provided need to move from confirming connectivity to testing the connectivity all the way down the network--from the WAN side of their residential gateway to the point at which the connection gets turned over to the Internet backbone.

Additionally, it’s not enough just to check one service but to check how all the services interact--voice, digital video and data--and perform “whole-house” service verification. Take, for example, a customer who ordered digital video service from their cable company. When installing the service the field technician noticed that the signal wasn’t strong enough. The simple solution to the problem was to attach an amplifier to the line to solve the problem. A few weeks later, the same customer ordered high-speed data service from their cable company. The broadband installer visited the customer and determined that the line was overpowering the modem, so they attenuated the signal, installed the high-speed service and left. Shortly thereafter, the customer noticed degradation in their digital TV service. A video service technician was dispatched and increased the amplification of the line, which immediately caused problems with the high-speed data service. This “duel” of competing services went through one more cycle before the service provider figured out the real problem. In short, not only was it important to have a “whole house” view into the installation process, but to also make sure all the services were functioning within specified technical guidelines from the outset.

Understanding the network from the inside out: LAN and WAN considerations

As the quality of the connection becomes increasingly important, so does the ability to look at the problem not only from the customer premises side (e.g. a PC resident agent) but also from the network side. In other words, customer support needs to have both a premises and a network view of the customer and it needs to be able to solve problems from each point-of-view.

As the world moves from high-speed data to VoIP and IPTV delivery from one provider, a broad, unified view of the total customer environment is required to diagnose and resolve problems. The network delivery side assumes added importance because not only does a slight degradation in network quality have a noticeable effect on voice and video services, as discussed above, but also there is less intelligence available on the client side, which tends to be very thin (e.g. a phone vs. a PC). As a result, there is a need to have more problem diagnosis and resolution capability on the network side, where all the control is located.

Compare, for example, high-speed data to cable or telephone service. When was the last time a customer installed software on their set top box or telephone? “Never” is the likely answer, since the service provider owns this responsibility. But while a service provider may think “they know what they are doing,” mistakes are human and can be made often. Service providers need the tools to isolate and resolve those mistakes, many of which may surface through calls to the call center. Instead of escalating those problems to network operations or the central office, why not empower call center personnel to diagnose and resolve those problems? With the network view and the right tools for step-by-step resolution service providers can make both the customer and network management happier and more productive.

Problem resolution to the 4th power: Multi-choice to multiply success

With market opportunity comes heated competition. Service providers must offer an exceptional experience that engages users in new and more effective ways across multiple service channels. More small businesses and consumer households will opt for one service provider for all services. Customers want the ease-of-use provided when one service provider can meet a complex list of in-home or small business networking requirements and provide a single point of customer care--in addition to one monthly bill. While the challenges are great, there is a corresponding opportunity to drive average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) to higher levels than ever before through the bundling of new IP-based services.

With the variety of services (and the variety of problems associated with them) available to customers from service providers, subscribers will benefit from a greater choice of support channels which can help them resolve problems--often before they even occur:

1. Self-healing: Solutions that enable customers’ systems to preemptively fix problems with automated resolutions before they bring subscribers to a halt and cause them to telephone for assistance. Powerful self-healing technologies can be remotely activated to automate the repair of one PC or systems across the entire home multimedia network.
2. Knowledge-enabled self-service: empowers subscribers to diagnose and solve their own problems. Customers want the fastest path to problem resolution (and service providers want the most cost-efficient service delivery channel that doesn’t sacrifice customer satisfaction). A self-service support channel allows customers to fix their own problems without having to telephone a customer service representative (CSR). Automated software with built-in personalization functionality can help provide answers that leverage individual, permission-based information about the subscriber’s environment, from both the premise and network sides, and provide highly targeted results that can lead to faster problem resolution.
3. Intelligent assisted service: enables CSRs to more rapidly solve problems. For example, when a customer initiates a request for help, permission-based information about the subscriber’s system, the network and related problem is collected. This is then distributed to the most appropriate customer service resource to speed problem resolution. With individualized premise and network customer information collected in one spot there needs to be the ability to provide step-by-step best practices to the CSR so they can provide quick, efficient, personalized problem resolution, without having to escalate to more expensive personnel.
4. Mass healing: enables network operations staff to remotely manage and upgrade firmware and configuration settings across a wide range of customer premises equipment (such as modems, gateways, routers, and access points). As a result, problems can be prevented from ever surfacing by keeping the customer premises equipment up-to-date without requiring customer intervention. Further, service policies can be more strictly enforced.

Digital 360 degrees: The virtuous service circle that puts the customer experience at the center of the triple play

A “Digital 360º Vision” provides service providers with a complete view of the technology environment from both the network and the customer premises sides of a problem. This contrasts with limited, traditional approaches that can only manage narrow customer issues within either the network or within the customer premises, a Digital 360º vision enables service providers to have a single view of both the last mile (network-side) and the customer premises (subscriber-side) by providing an integrated set of service automation solutions to manage, diagnose and resolve customer problems, whether VoIP, digital video, broadband or home-network related.

By creating a service loop that travels from within the network to inside the customer premises--and back again, the service provider receives one comprehensive view of specific issues that may be affecting its customer--with particular attention paid to network quality, which especially impacts service delivery.

Digital 360º solutions should be designed to work together from the first day of service installation through to ongoing service management. For example, customers benefiting from service provider adoption of a Digital 360º vision can proactively receive network downloads of the most current firmware from their provider, use live-chat functionality for immediate access to a CSR if there’s a problem, permit permissions-based remote control of their system by the CSR to diagnose the issue, and receive an automated solution pushed to them via the Web to provide a one-click-fix.

A Digital 360º vision doesn’t mean more work for the service providers – it can actually help shift certain functions back to customers, themselves, via self-service automation. A Digital 360º solution has the capability to pull intelligence, such as signal level or signal quality, from the network and match that to a best practices resolution flow. A similar depth of automated customer service ideally matches the depth of the service provider’s triple play or home multimedia product offering.

Digital 360º means that a service provider can make itself even move valuable to the customer by assuming the role of a “virtual CIO” – a role many, if not most, customers have asked them to fill for years. And with Digital 360º, the service provider now has the means necessary to fill this role successfully and, most importantly, profitably.

The ideas above, when implemented together, can deliver a framework for digital service providers to offer best practices both across customer support channels and across new services. These services, when combined with a great customer experience, can build brand loyalty and expand subscriber relationships, fueling the future growth of the home multimedia network environment.

Marc Itzkowitz is Product Director for SupportSoft Inc.

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