Customers have growing expectations for mobile broadband services. Better networks, broader device support, ubiquitous connectivity and competitive prices remain essential, but they’re no longer enough to keep customers coming back for more. Today’s mobile customers demand a superior customer experience, one that focuses on making it easy to discover, use and enjoy applications, devices and services.

Service providers are feeling the pressure to deliver on these expectations.

A renewed focus on QoE

Rising smartphone use is thrusting quality of experience (QoE) back into the spotlight. Smartphones appeal to users because they promise easy access to e-mail, apps, social networking and video. But smartphones have hidden complexities. Many users struggle with smartphone setup, app configuration, usage tracking and connectivity.

The end result is that smartphone users are turning to service providers more often — with problems that take more time to resolve.

Research by Alcatel-Lucent and WDS highlights the challenges associated with smartphone support:

• Average handle time is currently 15 minutes for smartphone issues — 28% more than for feature phone issues.
• A full 30% of smartphone problems even take more than a day to resolve.
• Follow-up calls are frequent as well: 43% of smartphone problems require two or more interactions with the help desk.

This isn’t what customers expect when they sign their smartphone contracts.

Avoiding aggravation at the help desk

Service provider help desks should be reliable sources of quick answers and effective solutions. Great help desk experiences can enhance QoE and strengthen customer–provider relations. But despite providers’ efforts, the help desk often remains a source of aggravation for many (smartphone) users.

The main problem is that help desk agents aren’t always equipped to deliver fast, reliable solutions. Many lack easy access to timely intelligence about devices, applications, services and networks. They hunt for solutions manually — often across dozens of systems — or escalate issues to higher-tier support. For customers, the end effects are long wait times, frequent transfers and repeat calls.

What customers expect from support

So what kind of support do (smartphone) customers expect from service providers? The answers are straightforward:

• They want quick and effective solutions that let them enjoy their devices and services.
• They want to feel confident that their providers understand their unique problems, interests and needs.
• Above all, they want to feel like they’re always in control of the customer experience.
• The best support keeps customers connected to — and in control of — their devices, services, applications and content. From a customer perspective an ideal support offer includes:
• Personalized support that solves problems quickly and simplifies service and app configuration
• Access to the same QoE through every support channel —phone, chat, self-care, on-device help apps and social networking
• Proactive support that fixes problems before they become apparent

Knowledge helps service providers deliver

Service providers have in-depth knowledge of customers, devices, services and networks. This puts them in an ideal position to deliver the enhanced support and simple experiences customers want. The challenge is to make this knowledge available to the right stakeholders and systems at every point of customer interaction.

Systems that deliver the right tools, information and visibility to the right places at the right times can dramatically improve the customer experience. With support backed by data-driven insights, customers can:

Engage with agents who know what services, devices and apps they use, and who can identify problems, solutions and new opportunities in real time. This cuts handling time and gets customers back on track faster.

Get support on all services from one well-informed source. This reduces escalations and transfers, and saves customers the trouble of explaining their concerns to agents who can’t actually address them.

Access automated configuration capabilities or apps that instantly connect them with the help desk using their channel of choice. This can eliminate complex configuration issues and allow customers to get support at their convenience.

All of these things can inspire customer satisfaction. Customers can feel confident that they can solve problems on their own or get help from someone who understands what they’re experiencing. The end results are fewer and shorter help desk calls, less frustration and more time for enjoyment and discovery.

Beyond the help desk

The relevance of data doesn’t stop at the help desk. With effective data mining and analysis, service providers can use their knowledge of customers to enhance and optimize many aspects of the customer experience.

For example, providers can apply their knowledge of customer usage data to present customers with valuable incentives — like unlimited mobile video downloads in off-peak hours at no additional cost — delivering more value for money. They can draw on similar knowledge to empower the help desk to extend compelling targeted offers. Or, they can use it to confirm that customers are getting the best possible value from their mobile packages.

Service providers can combine customer, network and usage insights to take a more proactive and positive approach to bandwidth management. For instance, to offset unpopular bandwidth and usage caps, providers can give customers compelling real-time opportunities to try different consumption patterns. These could include dynamic data pricing or free streaming of content sponsored by content providers.

Data-driven insights can also influence customer experience in more subtle ways, such as preventing bill shock. With the right insights, service providers can watch for abnormally high usage or billing charges in special conditions such as international roaming. They can then trigger alerts to offer transparency and choices that prevent undesirable surprises.

Getting “motivated” about customer experience

Alcatel-Lucent’s recently launched portfolio of Motive Customer Experience Solutions (CSX)  addresses the concerns outlined above. The CXS portfolio helps service providers forge stronger and more valuable customer relationships and foster long-lasting brand loyalty by building customer-focused improvements into their products and services.

As traditional TV collides with the internet, unprecedented changes are taking place in the video industry. The biggest trend is what Alcatel-Lucent calls ‘main-streaming:’ video streaming as the new normal mass market model for how consumers get their video.

In short, consumers want video content anywhere, anytime, on any device. In an early 2011 report, Neilson said U.S. consumers spent 34.5 percent more time watching video on the internet, and 20 percent more time watching mobile video, than they did in early 2010. No doubt that number has grown since—and will continue to grow.

Online video is popular with consumers because it satisfies an appetite for flexible consumption. Plus, the success of online services like Hulu+ and Netflix indicate customers are willing to pay for that flexibility.

Content delivery industry players like Netflix and Hulu offer video using ad-funded or direct-subscription business models. These content providers pay traditional content delivery networks (CDNs) like Amazon and Limelight to publish video content online, because doing so theoretically helps ensure quality of service (QoS).

Trouble is, CDNs are making promises they can’t keep. The structure of their platforms—where caches are located at the edge of ISP networks—simply can’t provide guaranteed adequate QoS for end users. This presents a significant opportunity for network service providers.

“Network service providers are the only one who can ensure QoS, because they own the physical connection to the end user,” Alcatel-Lucent explained in a white paper about main-streaming. “QoS can be a differentiator for them compared to other players in the media value chain, and they have a unique opportunity to leverage this position.”

QoS is not the only concern, though. The impact and focus surrounding main-streaming varies depending on which side it’s viewed from.

End-users want improved quality of experience (QoE). Content owners want secure delivery and guaranteed QoS. Service providers want (or rather, need) support for a wide range of streaming and downloading technologies, and optimized traffic to meet demand while reducing transport costs. 

“On-net CDN, or service provider CDN, is a key component to answer the needs of all players in the value chain, by allowing a better QoE for consumers while reducing the cost of transporting video,” Alcatel-Lucent explained in its white paper.

On-net CDNs own the networks over which video content is transmitted. At the last mile, service providers take over with content closer to the end-user through caching deep in the network.

By partnering with on-net CDNs, service providers can increase revenue, reduce transport costs and improve user experience through multiple business models using multi-screen video platforms.

Retail Model – the network providers becomes a content retailer, dealing directly with content providers to secure distribution rights—enabling high profit potential. Because of operational requirements, Tier 1 providers are most likely to adopt this model.

Wholesale Model – premium content delivery services are established for direct use by application and content providers. ACPs publish content directly into the operator networks, and network providers are compensated as a CDN provider. This model—appealing to Tier 1 broadband access providers—has smaller profit margins but also requires less overhead.

Transparent Caching – enables over-the-top (OTT) content delivery, with service providers deploying caching island to intercept OTT traffic, thereby reducing infrastructure costs and improving QoE. Content is delivered to subscribers without a direct relationship with content providers.

Major players in the video content industry, such as Verizon, are adapting to the new reality of main-streaming by adopting IP-video solutions like Alcatel-Lucent’s Velocix. For Verizon, which initiated a CDN deployment in 2008, Velocix helped speed up time-to-market, boost operational efficiency, enable multiscreen integration, and efficiently control costs for content delivery.

The success of on-net CDN as part of the main-streaming value chain depends on several key building blocks of service, publishing and storage and delivery: the control tier (management interface, network performance, usage reporting), the storage tier (provides content), and the delivery tier (delivery digital assets to end-user devices).

Deploying a CDN is a specialized effort

“A common misconception is that an existing network team can be used to design, deploy and operate digital media delivery infrastructure, but the skill set required are very different to those found to run a network,” Alcatel-Lucent notes in its white paper. “This is not just about deploying some boxes/cache into the network, but operating a CDN network requires some tools and expertise.”

Design, ingestion, resiliency, security, management, monitoring and reporting, and portal are key elements of any CDN deployment. The Velocix IP-video solution addresses these by being purpose built with efficient caching options, smart content replication, on-board instrumentation, low touch operation, troubleshooting tools, go-to-market support, monetization options, and speedy time-to-market features. 

Sustaining a successful public transportation system, such as train service, depends on that system being both convenient and safe. For train passengers, especially women, safety (both actual and perceived) can be a major issue.

In a recent article in TRACKTALK, “What puts women off using the train?” Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Associate Dean at University of California Los Angeles’ School of Public Affairs and Urban Planning, shined a light on the critical role video surveillance and passenger information systems (PIS) can play in helping female travelers feel safe. As she noted, “Dark and deserted stations and trains are understandably off-putting and can encourage people to seek alternative means of transport, or even not travel at all, to avoid feeling threatened, or in some instances becoming a victim of crime.”

For the uninitiated, PIS are electronic information systems that provide real-time information about estimated arrival and departure times, as well as brief descriptions regarding the causes of disruptions. PIS not only can be strategically located at transportation hubs but their information can be accessed remotely via a web browser or mobile device.  As the author says, video surveillance solutions like those developed by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), using a new Critical WAN Infrastructure solution based on IP/MPLS, go hand-in-hand with PIS as tools that, when combined with human staffing, can address the most pressing aspects of safety for all train passengers.

Loukaitou-Sideris researched this topic in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, and found that women train passengers are most concerned about their personal safety in several types of situations: 

• Waiting for a long time at a station
• Poor visibility at the station (e.g. night, poorly lit)
• Lack of staff members at the station
• Being the only passenger on board a train carriage
• The presence of another single, male passenger, or a crowd of drunken passengers

“Darkness, isolation, and limited opportunities for surveillance were all identified as the major reason that anxiety might increase among passengers, particularly women,” the author said. However, she found that unfortunately there is a gap between security measures that women feel are appropriate, and security measures operators generally choose to provide.

Transport authorities, Loukaitou-Sideris found, tend to prefer installing technology like closed-circuit TV (CCTV) video surveillance rather than adding more security staff, because it costs less. Video surveillance, of course, is only effective at actually stopping crimes if security staff is watching the feed and responds promptly when there are issues. “Technological solutions that are currently available and widely used such as communication points, and emergency buttons are viewed as a positive means of drawing attention,” stated  Loukaitou-Sideris. She added, “However, concerns though remain about where exactly the operator at the other end of the line might be, and how quickly they will be able to respond.” 

While the most fear-inducing possibility is a violent crime like rape or other physical assault, instances of intimidation, verbal assault and groping are much more common yet hard to prove, and thus tend to haunt female passengers.  Women, Loukaitou-Sideris says, feel that if there were more security staff around, these “lesser” crimes would occur less often. 

That said, if used appropriately, video surveillance and other technology can and does make passenger safer. For example, accurate information about train arrival and departure times—displayed on screens at the platform, or delivered through other means like on-board communications—helps passengers minimize the time they spend waiting at an unstaffed station.

Where Alcatel-Lucent’s Critical WAN Infrastructure Solution serves a vital function is to automate and simplify operations management. As TRACKTALK highlights, as a result of the increased desire by transit authorities around the world to protect not just passengers but critical physical assets that might be targeted by terrorists, there has been an increasingly holistic approach to railroad security.  This is driving the need for interconnected surveillance and alerting.  In this regard, several perspectives — social, economic, customer and transit system operations — must be taken into account.

It may sound a bit obvious but this approach must rely on a networking environment that is always on, always available, and can provide a level of granularity that enable authorities to accurately identify trouble spots and people and react quickly. In short, there can be no alternative to being on constant watch and having trained professionals ready to react to any contingency.   

Finally, Loukaitou-Sideris states that security must be balanced with efficiency. After all, the goal is to get people to use the system.   The implementation of cumbersome and time-consuming security practices, especially for mass transit systems in urban hubs, could dissuade not just women but all potential customers from riding the train.  She found that, “Anything that delays the transport process makes public transport less attractive compared with automobiles…Airline passengers are able to tolerate more delays, but it is not the same for rail passengers who would not wait for hours to go through security. In busy cities where thousands of people are flowing through stations this is impractical anyway.”

While we live in an increasingly dangerous world, having a high-performance communications network that can support all aspects of rail security (in stations as well as throughout the physical transit network) is no longer being viewed as a luxury, but as a necessity.  Finding the optimal balance to assure safe journeys with minor inconvenience is a complicated task which is why transit authorities are working closely with communications solutions providers to achieve that balance.  

As active transactional individuals in the Internet age, here are a few questions to ponder for a moment.

• How do we present ourselves to the world, or choose not to, and why? 
• What does our view and management of our multiple identities —on multiple physical, virtual (and where they intersect/converge/blur) platforms —tell us and others about predicting and/or leveraging our behavior?
• Does where you are in your life matter? 
• In an age where dynamic context-based identity mediation will be paramount (for individuals and organizations alike), whom do we and can we trust and entrust with our identities?
• How does trust factor into our purchasing decisions?

These are not existential questions.  In fact, as pointed out in a previous blog, they are the subject of an important new book, Identity Shift : Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, written by Alcatel-Lucent’s Allison Cerra and Christina James. 

I recently had the privilege of speaking with author Cerra to get deeper detail and insights into her work with Ms. James. It happened to coincide with an Ad Age article by Michael Learmonth entitled, “CMOs Explain Why They're Flocking to Vegas for CES,” which was fortuitous. 

The book is about advancing the science of understanding behavior (aka shifting IDENTITY) and the role and criticality of trust in a world of accelerating technologic change. The article had a great quote from GE CMO Beth Comstock that validates why the Cerra/James work goes far beyond being an academic exercise.  Comstock says she and other marketers need to be at CES because, "I'm a marketer and that makes me a behavioralist…How is tech changing the behavior?"  Finding the answer to that and other questions like the ones above is why CMOs should attend CES. She might have added, as the book does, that there is a vice versa involved here since what the Internet has done is profoundly change the nature and relative power in buyer/seller relationships.

A look between the covers

OK, so maybe this is not just a deeper dive between the traditional covers but the virtual ones as well. It is instructive to look at the flow of the sections of the book to get to the meat of the matter.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the research model employed is Ethnography. This approach goes beyond the number crunching of demographics and psychographics to focus on how close-up observation of human interactions correlate, corroborate and yield insights that can be extrapolated and used with insights from larger behavioral studies.

Cerra fleshed out the authors’ “3-P Model of Identity.” and why understanding the categories and where and how they intersect, as well as relate to the issue of trust, is so critical as a tool for causal explanations of what was observed and how the observations can be applied.  

Presentation:  This is the predominant thing most of us worry about.  It is about how the world views us.  In the physical world we tend to have more than a modicum of control over our image/reputation.  However, in virtual world our image is as much created by anyone else as by us.  This creates tension according to Cerra, “I can choose who I want to be, but have little or no control necessarily over who I am.”  In the context of identity management online it means having a presentation strategy that encompasses our various persona modes —personal, professional, visible and known and anonymous.

Protection:  Cerra says this is the one that grabs the headlines, but it turns out the research indicates people say they are very concerned, yet for the most part willingly provide information online without taking precautions.  As she pointed out in the interview, “Not all harms are created equal. We are equipped with primal senses that guide us as to whether “fight or flight” is the path to feeling safe about our privacy, loved ones, and valuables.”  She noted that physical defenses are rendered useless in the virtual world, and that the dynamics of constantly changing and blurred personae at any given decision point are all related back to the issue of trust in terms of behavior. This is a case of “watch what I do and not what I say”, since actual behavior can veer widely from stated intention.

Preference:  This aspect of the role of identity looks at how, when, where and why future actions can be understood in the context of what we prefer is likely to be what we want. In fact, preference is an important component of sites such as Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, etc.  

Cerra cautions that the conscious and sub-conscious dynamics of these aspects of identity can turn on a dime which is why observation of individuals as they act are key.

Universal laws

Based on the model, and a close analysis of observed behavior as tested against a broader look at the actions of 5,000 individuals, the authors came up with what they call “universal rules.” They are examined in the book to demonstrate how the power of rationalization and confluence exemplified in these laws, “lay the foundation of behavior and perceptions that unites consumers, no matter their age, socioeconomic status or gender…Represent the entry point for understanding individuals in a virtual world – whether as ourselves or as consumers we attempt to serve.”

The laws are as follows:

• The Law of Learned Helplessness— we fail to do things because of a perceived lack of control over our environment.
• The Law of Illusion— roughly translated means I can’t handle the truth but am ok with a rationalization that makes me feel good about a decision.
• The Law of Recall— we fall back on what’s familiar – either because an experience or recollection is recent or prevalent in our own lives – regardless of the true probability of an occurrence.
• Rationalization: Finding Harmony in the Discord — doubt is good because it gives us license to act without feeling responsible or accountable.

It is all about trust 

The section following universal laws on identity attributes during life stages is worth a read because it shows that when it comes to transactional issues and how we behave when faced with a decision, even taking into account the laws, where we are in our life and what is important to us at that stage matters. However, at the end of the day, the 3P Model and the universal laws, roll up into that “behaviorist” thing, i.e., given our various personae in a virtual world, whether we are driven by presentation, protection, preference or looking through the world via age-colored glasses, it all comes back to trust. 

In other words, at any given moment in time, based on the policies and rules we associate with the virtual dissemination of our volition via electronic means, what level of control are we willing to give up/tolerate to not only get what we want, but to feel good about the experience. Why the book is such a breakthrough is the application of its analyses as predictive of what identity profiles are willing to accept, including such things as privacy conditions and opting-in versus opting-out models of interaction, to be transactional.  This includes a thorough discussion related to the title that our identities are not static but are constantly shifting. In fact, they need to be mediated by us manually, automated through the enforcement of our policies and rules, or in partnership with trusted service providers.

In fact, as Cerra highlighted, the book goes a step further.  It provides a peek into the value of the analysis. She offered a couple of titillating findings from the authors’ testing of 20 possible identity-oriented services against the 3P profiles:

• Those who are primarily presentation-oriented represented  50 percent of those studied
• They also represented 66 percent of buyers of identity services
• Four of top five services were presentation ones  

In addition, they found that when they measured trust there was a 60 percent correlation with a willingness to pay for identity services.  And, reflecting the universal laws, customers love or hate of a brand seemed to bear little or no correlation with willingness to pay if a customer perceived value in the offering.   As Cerra stated, “it turns out that what I say is different from what I do and from what I value.” This is certainly a profound finding for CMOs.

Getting closer to finding the Holy Grail

As the saying goes, “the bottom line is the bottom line!”  CMOs as accurately observed are behaviorists.  They do need to understand technologic change and its impact on shifting consumer transactional tipping points.  CES is the perfect place for them to get educated.  However, they also should read, Identity Shift: Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, if they want deeper context. 

People do not buy and use technology for technology’s sake.  The Internet changed that aspect of the buyer/seller relationship forever. It has also accentuated the need to recognize, understand and act upon the shifting nature of our multiple personae, especially as more and more of who we are, and how we act/transact moves into the virtual world. 

A marketer’s Holy Grail is being able to target a market of one with perfect knowledge as to what can/should/will motivate a transaction. A consumer’s Holy Grail is having perfect knowledge, absolute comfort when they purchase something, and control over the terms and conditions of a transaction. Are we there yet on either front?  No!   In fact, as we all know there are no perfect worlds. However, there is certainly invaluable illumination to be gained from the quest.

That said, thank you, Allison and Christina, for your contribution to making the journey well worth it.