What's the best way to measure network experiences? Should you be concern as a subscriber?

This week I am attending the CEM in Telecoms and was in a panel discussing the best way to measure network experiences. Is there really a best way to measure what a subscriber experienced while interacting with the network? I am most familiar with the mobile network so let me share that that... There are several ways to measure network experiences such as

• Network traces and recordings. All your interaction as a subscriber is recorded in the network, whether you have agreed with your mobile operator or not to record your interactions.
• Probes and DPIs. Same as in network recordings your interaction are recorded whether you like it or not, but more importantly all your usage information (user plane) are also recorded such as which websites have you visited, which applications you used, etc
• Device agents. This are applications either embedded or native that runs on your device and records your network interaction. In an embedded application like the default monitoring system device manufacturers employ or the one from Carrier IQ you are not able to opt-in, meaning you have no choice but to be recorded. In native application you can opt-in or opt-out much like you do with WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook, etc.
• Drive test. This does not actually measure your actual network experience but it tries to simulate your usage of the network.

All monitoring  involving the network are done discretely, meaning without the subscriber knowing it. What ever the mobile network operator does with this recording is their own choice, or what ever the person who has access to this recording do is his or her own choice. In a way this measure how good or bad your experiences are based on a the networks perspective. Although it does not care whether you have a bad or good experience.

Device based measurement I think is the best way to measure actual network experiences, but it should be on a native level meaning individual subscribers can choose whether they want their experiences measured or not. On the device all experiences a subscriber have is measured even his or her own perception of the experience. Let's take the classic and annoying dropped call, as a subscriber when a phone call is terminated unexpectedly it is dropped call. In the network if a call is terminated unexpectedly but not seen as abnormal then it is is not a dropped call. Ever wonder why when you complained of a bad quality the mobile network operator seem not to care?

At the end of March there is a CEM event in Dubai organized by IQPC, one of the topics being discussed is  "how can a service provider use the experiences of their subscriber to reduce operational cost."  Now this makes most sense since mobile operators are actually having a benefit in knowing what you experienced as a subscriber instead of simply storing it. It should be very interesting to listen to experts on what they think.

Apple is losing its edge in delivering a good customer experience at Apple Stores

Last weekend I was at the Apple Store in Väla centrum, in my home town of Helsingborg in Southern Sweden with 3 kids all wanting to buy apple products.  My previous experience at the Apple Store when they just opened was chaotic, store employees that are chatting with each other instead of helping customers and payment systems that does not work. OK that was the opening day, I can cut Apple some slack with the 20 minute wait. Apple Stores used to be the model of very good customer experiences but now I have that questioned… even the Phone House store on the same shopping complex now offer a better experience.

Back to last weekend… getting into the store the first thing kids did  is go after the iPads on display and starts exploring. Great.. Two kids less to manage… but my daughter who is desperate to buy a replacement iPhone charger is very desperate so she went around the entire shop looking for the right item. I quietly observed a  few feet away. No Apple Store personnel approached her or greeted her, or not even me… we seem to be invisible to so many Apple store employees as usual chatting to each other and busy looking down their own iPads.

10 minutes later my daughter found the items she wanted and looking around for someone to help.. I did the same, had eye contact with 4 employees in the Store but all immediately avoided my gaze.. Is there something wrong with trying to buy something? Another 10 minutes later we were still waiting, clearly frustrated  I went to approach an employee who is fiddling with his iPad, and saw he is playing a game.. A Game while working on a Apple Store! Are they all playing games on their iPads now instead of attending to customers? Is that the new Apple mantra? After another 10 minutes of coaxing an Apple Store employee about paying for the item we were finally out of the shop… In total I wasted 45 minutes in an Apple Store just to buy an iPhone charger…  Well Apple missed potential sales of 2 iPhone 5S and an iPad Air with the other 2 kids since we did not want to wait longer for Apple Store employees to provide any form of service.

With this bad experience on the same Apple Store I can only say that Apple is now on a death spiral. They lost their edge, they lost their customer experience edge. I will go back to that store in a few weeks just to check and verify how bad is Apple's customer service spiraling down… If it's an isolated incident on this particular Apple Store then Apple better put its act together on this store since they are losing customer. Last  weekend Väla was busy but Apple Store is empty.. Something that never happens in other Apple Stores I have seen on a busy day in the mall.

Talking about Customer Experience Edge there is a book "The Customer Experience Edge", its well written and good insight on delivering excellent customer experience from RoI to actual satisfaction of delivering excellent customer Service. At the end of March in Dubai the CEM Telecom Summit is going to take place where topics on how to improve customer experiences are going to discussed and lessons learned in various programs are to be presented. Its a very good one to attend even if you are not in the Telco industry since there are technologies that can used outside Telco…. Remember that the hardest customer to please are Telco customers, its not only the service delivered, or the product sold but the overall experience from choosing a phone or tablet to the right subscriptions to the actual experience when using voice and data services and using the device it self….

On "Customer Experience Management in Telcoms: Middle East Summit" One things catches my attention immediately upon looking at the brochure….The topic goes "How do you improve the customer experience of your high value customers to maximize revenue generation".  Delivering Excellent Customer Experience is not always about revenue generation, it is about excellent experience and the value or Returns of Investments it brings.  I would argue that it is better to look at it as Returns of Investments than maximizing revenue. Think of this, with bad customer experience your customers will go away… Putting the  an effective customer experience program should keep customers but the main should be delivering excellent service and not maximizing revenue… while the correct metric to see use in determine success of that program is returns of investment and not necessarily revenue. Do you agree?

Zappos is a very good example. They deliver WOW and by delivering WOW they in return become very profitable… the WOW delivered turns into TRUST and that trust into ADVOCACY thus not only increasing their revenues but also their profits.. More importantly they aim for an excellent customer experience and high profitability comes as an additional benefit. Can your company deliver WOW to your customers?

Customer Experience in Telecoms

Being in China last week give me glimpse how fast Customer Experience programs are being rolled-out in the country. This I can lay claim to while observing one of our customer deployments  (server failed, alarms everywhere, engineers panicked, solved with only 3 minutes downtime) where a single Customer IQ server receives more than 800,000 files per day and growing, this means that the update can be as much as 800,000 devices in that day or it can also be 800,000 customer complains to the operator in a single day… Hopefully for that customer, the largest operator in the world, its the former and not the later… On my way back to Nordics I can't help but think about what we in the western world term as big data, how much we stress about meeting big data requirements…. Comparing to China perhaps experiences from 800,000 mobile devices in a day is not yet considered as big data when they have 800,000,000 subscribers…. Seems like our deployment has room to grow still before we can join the Billion subscriber club….

I have been asked a few times to speak on a conference or to blog about an event and while searching for meaningful conference to attend to I stumbled upon CEM in Telecoms Middle East Summit. And after discussions with IQPC's Radhika Sasidharan I agreed to be part of the event. One things that entice me to be part of it are the line up of speakers and the topics being discussed. I attended the event as speaker last year and at the same time as one of the sponsors.. Back then Telecom operators were trying to learn from other verticals such as airports, banks and hotels… A Year later its now very focused in to the Telecoms market. So the trend in the Middle East is similar to Asia where the  subscribers base of our  customers using the Customer IQ solution have exceeded more than a Billion considering the size of the operators we work with.

The CEM in Telecoms MEA will be in Dubai, the melting pot of culture and businesses at the end of March. I am very much looking forward to be there to see the progress that du have achieved with Osman Sultan (CEO, du) talking about how customer centricity starts at the top. Graham Webster of Telefonica will also be sharing how Telfonica O2 managed to engage their subscribers emotionally while Gurul Kurt will be presenting a case study in TeliaSonera about delivering on customer promises. Its going to be an exciting spring in Dubai…. And like last year perhaps I can catch some snow and skiing on the way back to the Nordics after the warm spring in Dubai….

Speaking of the Nordics, I won't make my flight to Norway today so enjoy the snow in Sweden and   contemplate on how customer experiences can be improved in one Nordic operator. Let's see.. how should I do that?