TRIPLE PLAYS REQUIRE INTEGRATED CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT

Having announced a new voice over IP service and plans for an IP-based TV service, SBC soon will increase the service options it has available for its customers, as well as its ability to offer these services with Internet access in a triple play bundle. This strategy promises revenue rewards, but also a new challenge to better manage customer relationships across a variety of services.

SBC’s recent announcements, as well as similar moves by companies such as Qwest and Verizon, show that large ILECs have recognized the need to off-set ongoing declines in their numbers of access lines, said Mike Couture, vice president of solutions at Amdocs.

“These telcos are getting strategic about the customers they want to keep, and they’re doing it by talking about bundling,” Couture said. “But they still have individual silos of business processes that are barriers to that transformation.”

Back office vendors like Amdocs are pitching carriers on the idea of integrated customer management—being able to sell to the customer across a variety of services from any single service channel, but also being able to manage service ordering, billing and carrier/customer interactions seamlessly across services.

This means that back end systems need to be more integrated, but also linked to an increasing number of customer “touch-points,” said Eran Wagner, vice president of business development at Amdocs.

Wagner said SBC’s planned IP TV service is an example of that trend. “The touch-points with the customer will now include not only the Web and the phone, but also the TV,” he said. “Customers will able to order services through the TV, and the interaction between the carrier and customer must be agile enough to create a positive experience.”

Both the challenge and the advice for dealing with it might sound familiar to carriers. For several years, they have been made aware of the “silo” problem, and it prompted many carriers to undertake massive projects to streamline and better integrate their business processes. However, many of these projects fell by the wayside when the telecom industry began its economic decline more than four years ago, Couture said.

“But, now, we see the competitive environment intensify again, and there is renewed recognition of an opportunity for growth,” he added. “Carriers see there has to be something different in the customer experience to take advantage of that and they are more open to the idea of integrated customer management.”