Working the Web, Carriers push interactivity to deliver customer service

Carriers anxious to capitalize on the Internet are seizing its potential as a marketing bonanza. Few are counting on profits yet, but local exchange and interexchange carriers are overhauling their corporate home pages on the World Wide Web to provide the interactive, customized experiences that on-line users crave.

Static press releases and product lists still have their place, especially for users with 14.4 or 28.8 kb/s modems. But carriers are working to offer souped-up services ranging from catalog ordering to graphics-rich, interactive games. They have found that on-line customer service requires learning from end users through e-mail, surveys, focus groups and customer surfing patterns. The result: one-to-one marketing for targeted audiences, including other carriers, early adopters and college students.

Phone bills are proving to be a perfect model. MCI customers can read summaries or details of their bills, past and present, by entering an identification number and a password. They can see profiles of their spending habits or update accounts-adding a pager or a cellular phone, for example-on their MCI One consolidated bills. A toll-free, "find me, follow me" feature lets customers program a phone number where they can be reached.

U S West is the first Bell company to let its customers review summaries of their phone bills on-line. That capability and the Web site's customer service section started early this year in 12 of the 14 states in U S West's territory. To access the information, customers must enter their telephone number, customer code, Social Security number and must have a browser that supports secure transactions.

With no advertising, the bill summaries averaged 150 to 200 hits each day during the service's first two weeks, says Kristina Jonell, brand manager and former Internet managing editor at U S West. Hits are measured based on the number of times the HTML pages-not the accompanying graphics files-are downloaded to the user to ensure that each is counted only once.

The next step is letting customers pay their bills electronically, and a trial of that capability is expected to start this summer.

GTE offers on-line billing summaries to long-distance carriers that access GTE's local network. The company expects to offer the same service to the rest of its customers in 12 to 18 months, says Suzanne Neufang, manager of Internet communications and technology for GTE Service Corp.

Sprint customers can make billing inquiries, ask to change their billing address and request phone cards on-line.

On-line catalog The Web sites are filling a niche as telecom's answer to the now-defunct Sears catalog, updated for people in a hurry.

U S West's enhanced catalog of products and services lists prices for more than 700 products. Users who punch in their phone numbers also can find a service's installation cost and whether the nearest central office is equipped to provide it. The feature premiered in August 1996 because customers wanted more than high-level product information, Jonell says.

Callers seeking the same information talk with customer service representatives who leaf through stacks of printed manuals to find the information.

Web surfers also have direct connections via e-mail to U S West customer service reps and technicians. "We're trying to focus on using our Web site as a tool to have our customers talk with and transact with us," Jonell says.

BellSouth has started pilot programs to let people review their phone bills, gather pricing information on the fly and check the status of an order. Customers already can order mobile phone service on-line in certain areas.

BellSouth also is working on an equipment product catalog and is developing a format to let competing carriers electronically file paperwork so they can interconnect with its network. "Providing customized content is the key to how we're going to use the Web," says Larry Siegel, director of BellSouth OnLine, a division of BellSouth.net.

AT&T's site lets users obtain an AT&T Universal card, redeem True Rewards points and, for non-customers, switch to AT&T service at the click of a mouse. The IXC also plans to develop a site to handle frame relay customers' trouble tickets and another site through which customers will be able to manage their frame relay networks, says Andrew Myers, AT&T's managing Webmaster.

Ameritech customers can find out where new area codes have sprouted and review sample letters showing businesses how to notify their suppliers of area code changes. They also can order home office products and services, such as faxes, phones and pagers, via the Web.

SBC Communications recently relaunched its Web site to reflect a new corporate image after its April 1 merger with Pacific Telesis Group. From the home page, users can request more details about products and services through an e-mail feedback line.

"Users expect a site where they can get things done, and get a response from the company," says Bill Dickinson, content Webmaster for SBC.com.

BellSouth is targeting college students, offering the ability to go on-line to order phone and enhanced services to dorm rooms at two Florida colleges. That program will expand to 20 colleges this summer.

U S West ran a trial at six universities-three in Iowa and three in Arizona-that let students order premium features and connect or disconnect their phone service through the Bell regional holding company's Web site. The carrier is evaluating the results.

ISDN gets hip Many of these offerings have sprung up from ISDN's popularity on-line, despite the technology's complicated setup and negative reputation. U S West's site has become a resource for people looking into ISDN and other high-speed data options, says Jonell.

BellSouth lets users qualify for ISDN and order the service electronically in real time. The ISDN section, which launched in December 1996, explains the technology and details the service's pricing and availability to homes and businesses.

Pacific Bell takes orders for ISDN, additional telephone lines and custom-calling features through its Web site. The West Coast carrier also publishes an ISDN on-line magazine and hosts a bandwidth simulator that lets users with Shockwave capability compare the speed of access options, such as a 14.4 kb/s modem vs. an ISDN line, says Jona Roomian, director of Web and Internet marketing. The Web site generates enough revenue to pay for itself.

GTE's site features an ISDN availability index, which tells customers where the service is provisioned based on the first three digits of their phone number. GTE's goal is to offer on-line provisioning of asymmetrical digital subscriber line service, says Neufang.

Such utilitarian concepts haven't stopped Web designers from getting creative. AT&T and MCI have put some of their most sophisticated programming to work on technology testbeds. MCI, for example, offers QuickTime virtual reality tours of three sites, including an information technology center in Colorado Springs, Colo., called the Garden of the Gods. The user has a 360-degree view and can look inside and outside the buildings, says David Slovin, MCI's director of new media and fulfillment communications.

AT&T's Web site features 12,000 pages, including an education section called "brain spin." It offers interactive lessons about technology, including one about fiber optics that lets users maneuver a submarine to repair a damaged underwater cable while dodging a fast-moving shark.

The job of balancing high-impact graphics with technical information on a limited budget is a delicate one. Webmasters often play devil's advocate.

"The design is not just a pretty picture," says John Sloat, Web development manager for U S West's Creative Services Group. The carrier's 1995 site dazzled with large graphics, but it aggravated users with its lengthy download time and confused them about which items would respond to a mouse click. Focus groups shed light on the frustrations resulting in an updated Web site with fewer graphics, a navigation bar on every page, and a reorganized products section.

Bell Atlantic is experiencing a similar transition. The carrier initially allocated few resources to its home page. Although the page was visually appealing, it took time to download and had no search engines.

Greg Dziuban, director of communications technology, saw the need for the site to be more user friendly. While re-engineering an on-line service into a Web-based service for an interactive media company in Boston, Dziuban had reviewed Web sites listed on Yahoo and explored what worked and what didn't. At Bell Atlantic, he published guidelines and Web principles to help users quickly find what they needed. The RHC will redesign its site again if its expected merger with Nynex is approved.

"It's a blend of central control and each business unit knowing its customers," says Rick Omanson, a member of the technical staff in Ameritech's human factors and media prototyping department. Every page of Ameritech's Web site has a feedback button so users can e-mail comments to the 63 people responsible for business unit content.

The next generation The Web as a database unique to each user is the new model. BellSouth, AT&T and Sprint are racing to offer Web pages that respond to each customer's requests on the fly (see sidebar on page 32).

AT&T's Web site includes a personal guide that seeks out content and presents a different page for each user, based on his or her interests. "Instead of thinking of customers as an amorphous mass, the Web is enabling companies to present offers that really match what the customer is interested in," Myers says.

BellSouth customers want to do business when it suits their schedules and lifestyles, says Stan Yeatts, director of Web presence.

Yet Webmasters must be careful not to launch sites so personalized that they tie up a server for everyone else. "It's sometimes scary how far apart things are between what the marketing and advertising people want to do and what's realistic," Myers says. "We broker those things all the time."

The convergence of telecommunications and computer technology is nowhere more apparent than behind the scenes of carriers' World Wide Web sites.

There, programming languages such as Java, other object-oriented technologies and new database concepts are in the works to deliver a unique Web experience to each user.

AT&T considers its "Switch Now" offering-letting Web surfers sign up for AT&T long-distance on-line-the first step in its efforts to present pages on the fly, says Andrew Myers, managing Webmaster. Information would be stored in databases rather than in Web pages. Common gateway interface technology scripts would pour the requested content into templates to generate the pages.

Sprint is using its "for home" Web section to test a similar plan due out this summer to let users develop their own pages.

The interexchange carrier also is developing communication tools to identify users and issue targeted banner advertising. "Based on the information that's gathered on-line, we can address current and potential customers with information that's relevant to their specific needs," says David Church, group media manager.

BellSouth initially built its own architecture, then used WebObjects technology to build its ISDN presence on the Web. "We are 100% object-oriented development," says Larry Siegel, director of BellSouth OnLine, a division of BellSouth.net. "It's a paradigm shift from the standard way of developing software. It supports changes very easily.

The Bell regional holding company is now starting pilot projects that will let customers review their phone bills, order from a custom catalog, check the status of an order and link businesses to specialists via an artifical intelligence "solution adviser" that would deliver personalized advice.

BellSouth also is using customer trials to help build its Web strategy. "All these interactive capabilities have proved successful in customer trials," Siegel says. The final step is making sure everything works the way it's intended before it is deployed.

Web objects serve as a bridge to what Siegel terms "the promised land of Java." The first step toward using Java is to integrate it with the carrier's existing architecture. After that, Java will be sent to the client space via applets. Eventually, Java can be incorporated on both client and server sides, enabling a server to maintain a continuous interactive session with a user.

Java is important because it enables platform independence and embodies the conventions and other aspects of object-oriented languages that have been learned in the past 10 to 20 years, Siegel says.

U S West's Advanced Technologies Department also designed its own version of WebObjects to link customers to summaries of their phone bills without letting people hack into the carrier's databases. The RHC has decided to maintain interactive sessions on its server so it doesn't write files to customers' systems.

"Each visit to our site is a custom presentation," says Brad Reeves, technical Webmaster for U S West. Yet customer service mechanisms still need to be improved, he says. "We're sitting down to look at a redesign of the site that would involve Java code and a new HTML standard.

"In the future, I wouldn't be surprised to see Web sites customized to each individual user," says John Sloat, manager for Web development for U S West's Creative Services Group.-SG

What started as a fad for the techno-savvy has evolved into a critical business strategy. For telcos brimming with computers and engineers, the World Wide Web has put a premium on art, communication and interpersonal skills.

Now employees schooled in marketing, graphic arts, psychology and sociology are heralding a new carrier era.

One of the pioneers of this transformation is Kim Keels, who was working as area manager of market mechanization for Southwestern Bell when she became intrigued by talk of the Internet at trade shows and from fellow graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis.

Impressed by the vastness of the information on-line, Keels immersed herself in the medium. At work, she enlisted other believers, hosted meetings, cajoled doubters, mobilized volunteers from the telco's legal department, and gathered news releases and details about the hottest telecom products.

After a year of working to generate interest, Keels finally had enough money set aside to start Southwestern Bell's Web site. Its launch date was Nov. 15, 1994.

"I did whatever needed to get done," said Keels, her native South Carolina accent underscoring her 'ah, shucks' attitude. "There always has to be somebody like that. I was a glorified coordinator.

Keels, now Southwestern Bell's director of Internet services-content development, credits co-worker Gay Fields with playing an equally important role in making the Web site a reality. Fields, then area manager of strategic planning, convinced company officers that the Internet was for real. She is now corporate manager of strategic planning.

At GTE, the action happened on a basketball court. Chris Matheus, a principal member of the technical staff, and Ernie Levinson, former supervisor of system and network services, agreed in the middle of a pickup game that something had to be done.

They rounded up fellow workers at GTE Labs and created a prototype identifying elements they believed essential to a telco Web site. Their work required a contact at corporate headquarters, as well. A team was set up, and after six months, the site launched.

Web sites, once such a hard sell, are critical to a carrier's competitiveness. Of particular importance to making the sites a success is the field of human factors. The eclectic discipline of human factors traces its roots to the 1930s when it was used to design aircraft cockpits for the military. Its goal is to provide tools, techniques and models for improving productivity, ease of use and reducing errors and training costs, said Alan Edwards, a human factors consultant at Unisys and co-chairman of the recent Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '97.

Ameritech is a consummate example. Each of the 12 members of its human factors group-the people who study human-computer interaction-has a Ph.D. in psychology.

The Ameritech technical staff's challenge is to add new functions to the Web page that fit the needs of many different audiences, says Rick Omanson, who spent eight years at Bell Labs and who has a doctorate in experimental psychology.

Bell Atlantic hired Greg Dziuban, director of communications technology, for his communications skills and Web experience. He has a master's in community leadership, completed a graduate course in counselor education and studied journalism as part of a U.S. Air Force graduate program.

Lyn Bain, user interface designer in U S West's multimedia group, joined the carrier in August 1988 as one of the department's first employees. "We work hard to make things as easy to use as possible," she says.

Bain, who has a master's degree in industrial psychology, discovered that human factors fulfilled her interests in art, science and psychology. "It's one of the only fields that lets me be creative and scientific at the same time," she says.-SG