By: Peter Bernstein, TMCnet Senior Editor
No matter where one looks these days, be it in enterprises or service providers, there can be no disputing that enhancing the customer experience has become a top, if not along with security the top, C-level concern.
Indeed, from burnishing the brand to enhancing customer loyalty, having permission to upsell and getting early visibility on new opportunities the customer experience (CX is now the short appellation) has become a cross line-of-business preoccupation and priority. This has meant business units’ increased attention on listening to, analyzing and reacting upon needs arising from the “voice of the customer” (or certainly knowing more about their service usage behavior), and IT department focus on providing the tools necessary to support these requirements.
It has also meant that businesses of all sizes and vertical markets are changing their views on what it takes to have a better understanding of the customers. This means using new metrics for success. It also has highlighted the realization that you need to look at life cycle management of customers, i.e., as the headline says it is no longer about the destination in the form of a sale but is about assuring optimization of what has been popularized as “The Customer Journey.”
Ultimately, what it has also meant is that organizations need not only the tools, skills and strategies to optimize the customer journey but also need to be able do so quickly. The reasons are obvious but worth repeating. Competitors are becoming more nimble and customers armed with better real-time information themselves have become more fickle. Time is of the essence.
Illustrative of an area where there is, or certainly should be, a sense of urgency regarding having all of the capabilities to optimize the customer journey is in the global mobile services business. This is a sector rife with competition and susceptible to high churn rates. The good news is that the information that resides in the network and various lines-of-business (LOBs), when properly mined, analyzed and acted upon can give service providers more satisfied customers and a competitive edge.
The question is, where are the places to go to get the information and tools needed? The answer can be seen in a recent Alcatel-Lucent webinar, “LTE, It’s Not About the Destination, but the Journey,” which is embedded in its entirety below.
Spoiler Alert!
I’d like to encourage you to view the entire webinar by sharing just a few insights provided by presenters David J. Swift Marketing Director Wireless, and Josee Loudiadis, Director Network Intelligence, Alcatel-Lucent.
The first is the chart that is the backdrop of the webinar (yes you are seeing double) which is a still frame tickler as to why Alcatel-Lucent believes the deployment of an LTE overlay network is the preferred way to go as the vehicle for being fast-to-market. Swift provides a granular explanation but the benefits slide sums it up well.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent webinar, LTE, It’s Not About the Destination, but the Journey
The savings are demonstrable and it should come as no surprise that several of the world’s leading mobile service providers have opted for an LTE overlay as their choice for not just deploying but leveraging the Alcatel-Lucent LTE Express to enable fast deployment.
For her section of the presentation Loudiadis highlights the Alcatel-Lucent belief that the network has the information to keep customers happy. She describes what this information is, and how it can be generated and analyzed for use in looking at:
- Per subscriber performance
- SLA management
- Holistic customer care with visibility for agents and customers
- Identification of new service opportunities
- Enabling more agile marketing
In fact, a compelling case is made, and again with an emphasis on the need for service providers having some sense of competitive urgency, for implementing an analytics-driven customer care solution such as Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Solutions.
While a bit of an eye chart, you hopefully get the picture. 
Source: Alcatel-Lucent webinar, LTE, It’s Not About the Destination, but the Journey
Yes, the realities of the mobile market, especially as global service providers are in a mad dash to deploy LTE quickly and not fall behind competitors is to get it out there fast. However, being fast-to-market is only part of the equation. You need to also be cost-efficient, and more importantly fast in the market/agile as well. To be the later requires real-time actionable insights. That is where the information and insights from the network become critical.
Success going forward really will be about creating and leveraging better and better knowledge about the entire customer journey. Indeed, it is with such knowledge that services providers can go from being not just reactive but proactive in terms of not just pleasing customers but beating competitors to the punch.
