How telcos can use customer experience to differentiate in the mobile private networks space

Customer experience management (CEM) can be the biggest obstacle to complex mobile private networks (MPN) deployments. Yet adapting CEM to large industry verticals and companies that own/manage large physical areas like housing estates, stadiums, or a campus etc. plays to telcos’ inherent strengths, opening new opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs) to offer CEM as a service.

From an enterprise and/ or business customer perspective, creating their own Private Network offers them the mobility, privacy and autonomy they require to deliver the bespoke services they need. However, these benefits soon start to disappear once the realities of the day-to-day operation of managing a private radio and its on-premises core start to emerge. These operational hurdles require telco-grade managed operations, that are a class apart from a traditional IT operation which normally resides within an enterprises’ organization.

Network operational contracts with a CSP or any other capable organization may remove some of these hurdles, but the bigger question for the end customer becomes -whether it provides the enterprise user with the service they expect. Until the question of end user expectation is addressed, the success of Mobile Private Networks will remain elusive. To address this issue, customer centricity needs to be at the core of Mobile Private Network design, with a focus on specific adoption of use-cases and service innovation.

There is an infinite amount of data generated within a private network, whether it be user-centric type data (usage, movement, location) or machine-centric data type (sensor, probe data). This enormous intelligence set must be used by the CSP to guide their design and management of the MPN. Building a platform to do the complex analysis of this data is unviable for most private network customers but it is normal practice for a mobile provider.

When creating a private network, the provider needs to think about end devices and their end users’ experience for all the services they are providing. These customers hold more influence in decision-making compared to the normal retail customers of CSPs where the network is provided for a specific requirement or need. Since enterprise customers know the technology applications and data that will be used and a mobile private provider will have deep insights into customer journey within the network, a collaborative approach is required to create a service driven approach for end user journeys in order to deliver the greatest value and drive MPN adoption.

Customer experience management (CEM) as a service offering needs to satisfy two fundamental expectations: one arising from benchmarking for customer centricity in the industry of the business customer and another arising from benchmarking for customer experience as expected in the 5G world of telecom services. Hence, the expectation that the end user will have may be the best of both worlds.

TM Forum assets such as Customer Journey Process (IG1240), Gamification (IG1205) and IoCE (IG1234) provide the foundations for design strategy for designing and adopting CEM capabilities that can be generalized to offer CEM as a Service. TM Forum assets such as Open APIs and Application functions (TAM) provide guidance for architecting strategic “CEM as a Service” that is quick to align to the needs of Private network customers. TM Forum’s CEM Glossary (IG1235) helps by providing standardized terminology over which Private network providers, vendors and private network customers can collaborate with mutual understanding to make a standardized CEM as a Service offering. TM Forum CEM metrics and KPIs (GB962A, and IG1303 – coming soon) assist in measuring the experience.

The diagram below provides a comprehensive view of assets and capabilities developed by the CEM member project in TM Forum that assist in realizing CEM as a Service.

References are:

IoCE = Intent oriented Customer Engagement

CEM = Customer Experience Management

CJ = Customer Journey

ODE = Open Digital Experience