Competition worries? Try playing a game CLC's TeleSim simulates a real-world telecom environment

Faced with rising competition, new technologies, tricky customer care issues and a dizzying array of new regulations, some incumbent local exchange carriers are preparing their workers for the telecommunications battlefield in a different way-encouraging them to play a computer game.

But this game is hardly in the same league as Tetris and Solitaire. Developed by California software company Thinking Tools and Coopers & Lybrand's Information/Communications Consulting Group, TeleSim is designed to help employees really understand the implications of competition.

"Companies want to communicate to their employees that competition is coming, but they don't want to just do another presentation," said Andrew Zimmerman, a partner at CLC. "When people use an interactive game, they retain more because they're actually engaged."

TeleSim is targeted at middle-level managers, Zimmerman said, since they generally lack a broad picture of the telecommunications industry. "This is meant to convey to them the kinds of tradeoffs that top management has to deal with," he said.

The game allows the player to run a Bell operating company for 10 years, which takes approximately a half hour to play. The player is able to receive corporate information such as financial reports, communicate with internal management, gain data on competition on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, raise or lower prices, raise or lower quality, expand network infrastructure, and deal with regulators.

Progress is measured by a numerical score as well as by the image of a ship, which sinks and is eaten by sharks if the player loses.

Most players lose the first time and end up frustrated, Zimmerman said. A CLC facilitator then reviews the game with the players before they try again.

TeleSim is currently being used by Nynex and Pacific Bell, both of which contributed money toward the game's development.

"[TeleSim] provides a relatively safe way to help managers think and model the complexities of the telecommunications industry," said Armando Marquez, corporate transformation agent at Pacific Bell. "Only when we, as managers, understand the difficult decisions, limited resources and regulatory constraints that contribute to the complexity of running an RHC can we think less functionally and more strategically," Marquez said.

However realistic TeleSim may be, Zimmerman emphasized that it is only a game. "This is not intended for planning or for any predictive purposes," he said.

For that, customers can call on CLC's InfoCom practice, the largest practice dedicated solely to the telecom industry. In addition to TeleSim, CLC has helped telcos such as BellSouth Business Systems hone their customer service skills with Voice of the Customer, a customer care methodology designed to identify levels of customer satisfaction.

According to Zimmerman, when competition is introduced to a monopolistic environment, customer satisfaction levels shift. Once there is a choice, he said, a satisfied customer is more likely to become a dissatisfied one who may defect to a competitor.

CLC can help telcos determine what sort of resources it will take to keep that customer, and whether the customer is worth the effort expended.

For example, many telco managers come out of a manufacturing environment, where ta high value is placed on cutting down the time it takes to complete a task, he said. As a result, when faced with a repair that needs to be made, telcos tend to take care of it in the minimum amount of time, assuming that customers most highly value the speedy restoration of their service after an outage. In reality, however, the customer may be just as satisfied with an accurate estimate of how long the repair will take, Zimmerman said.

"Different segments of the market have different definitions of acceptable service levels," he said. "There may be a few hundred drivers related to service and fulfillment, but only 20 of them matter. We can take that and generate a plan that will maximize customer care while minimizing expenditures."