Converging for the customer

The industry's attempt to focus on fully convergent billing systems has allowed companies to concentrate on the familiar territory of internal technical requirements-and sideline customer requirements in the process. Taking on the challenge of managing diverse systems to create a convergent architecture benefiting the customer will fall short of achieving the real benefits of a convergence model for both carrier and customer.

Changes in public policy, acquisitions and mergers, coupled with the proliferation of start-up companies, have positioned service providers to offer many new product and service offerings across the communications industry. This emerging model has put pressure on service providers not to offer one service to all, but rather many services to fewer, targeted, high-value customers. From the service provider's point of view, this means knowing which services their customers use, why they use them and what value they generate. In short, this convergence model involves a continuous commitment to dealing with the customer as a single entity and evolving systems, business processes and behavior to meet that commitment.

Service providers face conflicting demands in the convergence model when putting together customer care and billing infrastructures. On one hand is the drive toward convergent billing with emphasis on single bills for customers and a single billing system for the service provider. On the other hand is the increasing tendency for carriers to create customer care and billing solutions by breaking up a single billing system and making it modular.

An increasing number of service providers are choosing independent systems to carry out functions such as mediation and collections, which were previously assumed to be part of the main billing system. In addition, time-to-market pressures and deficiencies in standard billing products force the introduction of entirely new billing systems even when there is a clear corporate policy against it.

The challenge facing service providers is how to make sense of these apparently conflicting developments. Solving the puzzle requires the creation of a convergent view of the business-and the customer-while creating and managing a systems architecture composed of increasingly modular and potentially divergent systems.

The coming of convergence Much of the difficulty has been created by concentrating on a single bill for all services and mistaking this for convergence. In a truly convergent business, the single bill is merely an option and not the essence. Concentrating on the single bill has allowed operators to focus on the comfortable territory of technical problems associated with divergent billing systems and to set aside business processes and corporate culture impacting the customer.

Webster defines convergence as "bringing all things together at a single point." In terms of convergent customer care and billing, the customer is the single point of focus. Putting the customer on center stage in this new model is the essential first step of determining the system requirements for a successful, competitive convergent business.

A holistic view of the customer as a single entity-possibly with multiple relationships with other customers, purchasing a package of communications services-reveals the segmentation necessary to drive a convergent business. Knowing that customer A has specific wireline and wireless services, how much the customer uses these services, what the customer relationship is to other customer accounts, coupled with key demographic information, arms the service provider with information to market convergent packages to high-value market segments (Figure 1).

From the customer's point of view, the consumer wants value, one-stop shopping and insulation from the inevitable chaos providers will experience by managing their diverse systems to create a convergent "look." In short, the customer wants excellent customer service for all communications needs. This will differentiate service providers and determine winners and losers.

The debate over one-stop shopping centers around the practicality of one customer service representative able to interface with a customer for all that customer's services. This would include not only billing but provisioning, maintenance and payment issues.

Clearly the jury is still out, but over the next few years a variety of single-point-of-contact approaches will be evaluated. The highest marks will surely be given to the model that throws out convention and rethinks the customer care model with a convergence point of view (Figure 2). This has yet to be done, but some ideas for achieving the best model might include:

* Throwing out the current CSR job description and re-writing it. Make it a job people want to transfer to, not from.

* Sticking to a single point of contact. The CSR that handles a call should get back to the customer-even if specialists are in the background resolving problems. This makes it a business process issue instead of a technology issue.

* Making customer service a product offering. Customers could pay different rates for various levels of service.

* Segmenting the market at your call center to offer the best, personal service to your best customers.

The customer comes first Approaching the convergence model with the customer on center stage will reveal the necessary systems requirements to address the preceding issues. However, to complete the equation with the customer on one side, corporate culture becomes the final ingredient. This means that if the service provider doesn't function with a convergent philosophy, the carrier will defeat itself.

Like diverse legacy systems, service providers have developed different behaviors for supporting wireline and wireless businesses. These center around marketing, credit and collections, billing, provisioning, maintenance and repair. These different cultures come from mergers and acquisitions, hiring entrepreneurial people to launch new businesses "out of the box," and the normal pride and competition among separate organizational structures within a company supporting different slices of the pie.

These differences must be boiled down into a new culture that views the customer holistically, embraces the customer as a single entity throughout all business processes, and commits itself to superior customer service through all business processes underpinning the convergent model.

Before trying to change systems, it is important to understand the customer information already available. A convergent view of the customer is impossible without analyzing existing data. Most telecommunications providers do not understand how the different sources of customer data are related. At the most basic level they have no way of knowing that a customer in their wireline database is also in their wireless database, and they certainly don't understand more complex relationships. Failure to understand these relationships leads, at best, to underselling and, at worst, the loss of customers for no apparent reason.

The first thing companies can do is invest in their existing data. This does not necessarily mean implementing an expensive data warehouse but can be achieved through using readily available analysis tools. A greater understanding of the requirements of different customer segments can lead to the development of new service packages that will drive changes within the systems infrastructure. This is in complete contrast to the prevailing model in which service packages are developed either because the systems allow them or as a belated attempt to mimic a competitor's offerings.

Systems developments will continue to play a key role in the drive to convergence, but it will be a supporting role. The object is not to create a perfectly convergent customer care and billing infrastructure, but to manage imperfect systems to support a holistic view of customer requirements. Customers must recognize convergence through a new way of service delivery and customer care-even without a single bill.