By Mae Kowalke

The battle for the best mobile device portfolio steals the headlines with its flashy array of smartphone offerings. However, increasingly it appears that the war will be won by the mobile broadband operator who provides the best customer experience as enabled by overall quality of experience (QoE) on their network.

“To thrive in today’s competitive mobile broadband market, service providers must deliver superior QoE and enrich the customer experience,” noted Greg Owens, director of marketing for customer experience at Alcatel-Lucent, in a recent Enriching Communications article, “Customer Insights Improve Business Performance, stated that, “With growing pressure to reduce churn and increase revenues, service providers need to have a better understanding of how customers use their services.”

By Susan Campbell

The mobile broadband services market has become almost hyper-competitive globally. And, it has become increasingly clear that providing superior quality of experience (QoE) to customers, end users as well as third parties, will likely be a (if not the most) critical element in creating sustainable and profitable differentiated value. As a result, mobile service provider investment attention needs to be focused not just on delivering speeds and feeds but also on all aspects of QoE. A holistic approach for concentration on customer care¸ such as the Alcatel-Lucent portfolio of Motive Customer Experience solutions, fits the needs for making sure the best possible user experiences can be provided, monitored and constantly improved.  

Why customer care, and why a comprehensive approach?

The reason is that a holistic approach to customer care is a fundamental tool for reducing vital churn rates. The bottom line is the bottom line here. Service providers (SPs) have the opportunity to make better use of the subscriber and network data to help not only make customers more loyal but also improve average revenue per user (ARPU) based on establishing a relationship that customers view as more “trusted.”  In fact, if done correctly, they can leverage the provisioning of compelling customer experiences into a powerful tool for making satisfied customers enthusiastic brand advocates.

The possibilities are nearly limitless, when providers leverage all the data that is available to them. The key is they have to do so in order to create the services that drive loyalty among user groups.

In order to facilitate that network migration, NTT Docomo has selected Alcatel-Lucent to build its backhaul network for its LTE-based services using the French-American firm's Ethernet transmission solution.

Knowing that, it is incumbent upon network operators to not only ensure their networks are capable of delivering their existing offerings, but to also ensure their viability into the foreseeable future. Which is why many, including Verizon Wireless, are already looking at deploying LTE (Long Term Evolution) technologies as a way of mapping out their network growth plans.