The CX of B2B

The opinions expressed within this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of TM Forum.

The established view of B2B in the communication service provider (CSP) world is of a CSP selling its services – such as mobile, broadband, or fixed line - to another business. The attraction of this approach for many CSPs is the step increase in subscription numbers that come with the bulk selling of these services.

In the last few years however, this view is being challenged and CSPs are beginning to explore how to partner with other businesses to reach wider audiences. This is evidenced by the growing diversity amongst Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) which are not only offering highly targeted packages for the traditional set of services, but are combining these with content, loyalty schemes or even grocery goods, to reach a larger, and often younger, audience.

To support these new trends in B2B, tech companies and CSPs have been focusing on developing and implementing integration platforms. These allow for the traditional services of mobile, broadband, fixed line and media to be expanded and integrated with the new partner-focused services - and yet still managed as one and accessible through a single API.

Whilst considerable progress has been made over the past few years and integration platforms that not only deliver the required flexibility but also a low cost of change are becoming more common, the customer experiences and user journeys that sit upon these platforms are still a topic of debate within industry.

The debate is, in part, fueled by the OSS/BSS system vendors each of whom have a view on the user-experience of B2B. If you talk to a billing vendor their UX is often centred around bulk purchasing or bill segmentation; if you talk to an OCS vendor their solution is focused on auto recharge or bulk provisioning; and if you talk to a digital content provider their solution is often focused on streaming quality or content navigation.

When a CSP or VNO brings everything together through an integration platform, regardless of the focus of the solution or the systems it integrates, they also need to merge all the differing UX capabilities, as well as their own USP, into a coherent customer experience that is not only inclusive but reflective of the company’s brand. Not only must the final result be engaging and brand sensitive, but importantly it must be cost competitive to deliver, quick to market and, crucially, easy to evolve.

Take for example, a VNO that specializes in delivering communication services for hotel chains. In this scenario, each hotel room needs TV content, pay-per-view, a broadband connection, a fixed line number, and the hotel staff need mobile phones so that they can be easily contacted. In this instance, each hotel within the chain needs to be able to generate a bill based on the services consumed by each room. They also need to be able to bulk purchase minutes and data for staff to use whilst at their hotel or moving between hotels. It is easy to imagine a set of web-portals and apps that could deliver both a management view as well as a consumer view. But how much would that cost to design and how long would it take to deliver?

Next, envision a digital content provider that has a social media following of 10M+ subscribers. The provider wants to invite its followers to join a membership club for a monthly fee. The membership includes an app with access to extended content, as well as a SIM card and mobile package. An app such as this will not only have to stream and organise content, but it will also need to enable top-up or pay-bill functionality. Again, the questions of set-up costs, time-to-market and cost of change are critical.

So, if we look at the partnership approach that is developing in the B2B space, what are the new UX paradigms? What is the best-of-breed B2B CX? Can we create the software that allows us to deliver the required flexibilities and life-time costs – at least until the norms are established?

Just as the integration platforms can deliver plug-and-play integration with OSS/BSS components to deliver a unified view of the services available, there needs to be UX frameworks that can deliver plug-and-play user-journeys that also offer pixel-perfect brand sensitivity.

Being highly customizable, with a quick time-to-market and low cost of change that allows VNOs and CSPs to easily modify and rebrand their shop window, is imperative for delivering a strong return on investment.