Making new systems work seamlessly to deliver new services, such as IPTV, is a significant undertaking and simultaneously delivering a high-quality experience to customers is a primary goal for most service providers. However, given IPTV is a relatively new technology, problems should be expected. Since customer issues such as installation, support and service quality can significantly affect operating expenditures, the success of the service often can depend on how quickly and economically problems can be resolved when they happen, and how to prevent them from happening in the first place.
1. Addressing Installation Challenges
Providing customer service representatives and field technicians with the ability to check service conditions and quality at their points of entry can help isolate problems to in-home wiring, or to devices, or to the network. Applying this type of intelligent automation and technology to new IPTV or triple-play installations helps keep costs down and reduce operating expense (OPEX). Service providers should consider products that can help in the following areas:
- Strive for zero-touch configuration and remote CPE management
DSL Forum specifications such as TR-069 enable home access gateways (and ultimately set-top boxes) to be remotely configured, managed and diagnosed. Remote management of the CPE that enables IPTV is critical for a robust service offering. Automated firmware updates, based on criteria gathered about the customer's CPE and networking environment, can prevent known problems from impacting the customer experience. - Verify all connections and services
Service providers should use tools to automatically determine if the customer's network is connected correctly to the in-home router, the service provider's network and services, and the Internet to lower costs and lessen the prospects of customer frustration and churn. - Create a simple user experience
By employing widely available technology -- HTML, Flash, Web-based video, e-mail, or IM for interactive questions -- service providers can create introductory instructional modules that help users with basic installation. Premises-based automation can pre-qualify the customer's environment, and analyze existing operating system and network conditions, performing network interface and protocol checks to ensure there is a network connection. - Extend proven self-service solutions for high-speed data to IPTV
Automated problem resolution, support articles and knowledge-enabled self-service all can play a role in automating IPTV support. Using the Web to deliver these "show-me" tutorials is better than relying on CDs. The Web generally can serve up the most current information, while CDs may reflect outdated or obsolete information.
2. Overcoming Customer Service Hurdles
The ability to manage complexity efficiently will have a direct impact on the adoption rate of new services and overall customer satisfaction. To keep customers happy, service providers must provide a consistent level of product quality and reliability -- so automation is key. Where possible, telcos should build on their existing reputations for reliability by developing the capability to capture and automate remote CPE management best practices. This will improve the usability, quality and reliability of product rollouts, and dramatically reduce the cost of service fulfillment and assurance activities. These practices not only reduce OPEX, but also can minimize customer churn while maximizing revenue. Key components in automating the subscriber's home environment include:
- Robust and data-driven best practices error handling
Best practices error handling helps resolve issues quickly, especially across a wide range of products and should be able to ascertain correct software driver installation, firmware, configuration, cabling topology, network configuration, and so on. This will guide the user to help resolve problems that might result from this inherent complexity. - Flexible architecture
CPE, including set-top box/decoders and modems, is always changing to reflect newer features and lower costs. Automation capability must be adaptable to the new, while continuing to support the old. The push to bring IPTV services online means most telcos cannot wait until all the kinks are worked out of fully automated installations. Service providers are automating what they can, while transitioning to fully automated installations. - Support integration
Any and all unresolved problems should be captured and forwarded to the help desk, enabling customer service representatives (CSRs) to address all problems and bring each subscriber on line with a single trouble ticket.
3. Surmounting Service Quality Expectations
Consumers have a good feel for what the minimum service levels for voice and television are -- after all, they've experienced a high standard of services for these offerings for many years. IPTV and VoIP service will have to meet or exceed these expectations.
But within the residence, factors like the customer's home wiring and service usage that can affect voice and video quality may be beyond the control of the service provider. In-home adjustments and configuration settings can have an effect, too. Without a thorough system check, one service call can inadvertently lead to another.
To maintain a high level of customer satisfaction after triple-play services have been installed at a customer location, service providers should consider solutions that remotely can verify service levels, as well as manage and enforce service policies (such as high-speed data usage).
Once a clean record from the installation has been stored, CSRs and field engineers can work to diagnose problems without costly or unneeded truck rolls. By automatically creating and storing a snapshot of the last known good working state, problems can be diagnosed and resolved much more quickly. Service quality verification can help service providers improve customer service and lower the cost of support in increasingly complex services such as IPTV.
These remote monitoring and verification tools should be adaptable to different levels of expertise so customers and different individuals working for the telco with many levels of expertise can interact with the system using the tools they need for the job at hand.
4. Realizing the Golden Opportunity
The whole IPTV and blended services experience needs to be easy from the subscriber perspective. Most people watch television by grabbing the remote control and pressing the "on" button. Yet analysts and industry players expect IPTV to introduce additional complexity into the overall viewing experience. Without a proactive investment in customer service, telcos could see their billions in investments go down the drain as consumers, won with a hard fight from cable companies and DBS providers, leave their customer ranks. And in the triple-play arena, customer churn is an even more painful scenario for service providers. If a triple-play subscriber has a problem with just one of their services, they may cancel all services from that provider, moving to a new provider.
The profitable adoption of triple-play services is built on exceptional customer service and that will rely in part on automation and best practices in a structured and methodical approach for installation, provisioning and problem resolution.
