The Internet of Everything (IoE) offers communications service providers a huge opportunity in the shape of becoming 'experience integrators' – leveraging their networks, platforms and partner ecosystems to offer intuitive, self-service, one-stop-shops for customers.

That's one of the key findings of our new Insights Research report, The roadmap of options: Monetizing and managing IoE services by analyst Phil Bull (see also our free ebook, Navigating the IoE roadmap of challenges).

"Aided by process automation to help guide users through the steps of browsing, selecting, building and activating IoE services, this approach can deliver exceptional experience journeys," he writes.

This is because so many areas of IoE which present the biggest growth opportunities are highly likely to also result in unwanted complexity for customers. Digital health is a good example; patients often struggle to cope with many discrete steps instead of an easy-to-navigate experience. They must set up their monitor and phone to send blood pressure data back to the doctor, for example. They need to book appointments, order and collect medications and more. Maybe they want to be reminded of important steps they need to take, for instance to comply with medicine or exercise regimes.

There are similar scenarios when it comes to interacting with an increasingly connected city, for example, or perhaps even when applying for a mortgage or other financial product.

Whatever the scenario, in an integrated world this could all be done through one interface. Erik Meijer, Group Innovation, Deutsche Telekom likens it to buying a single ticket for multiple modes of public transportation.

“People using public transport would like to have one point of service to buy a ticket which enables them to use different modes of transport to reach their destination without having to buy many different tickets for different parts of the journey,” he says.

Experience integrators will not only enable customers to choose services from various partners, but will provide a unified experience right across the customer journey.

Make it happen

• Digital touchpoints

The IoE with its billions of interconnected devices has many implications for customer centricity including introducing very many more digital touchpoints. These touchpoints make managing customer experience more challenging. However, they can also be used to improve the quality and scope of customer experience. The graphic below shows how service providers can use digital touchpoint data to add value:

• Importance of omnichannel

Omnichannel is a strategy that ensures customers have the same consistently good experience each time they interact with a company. Key to this approach is retaining a coherent, contextual history of all the interactions across all channels, whether at a store, online or through a contact center to ensure a consistent and personalized experience.

“You need to see the IoE customer journey as automated, self- service and based on any device (laptop, smart phone, etc.),” says Jean-Luc Tymen, Senior Architect, Orange. “You need automated discovery and customer journey management.”

But this doesn’t mean human involvement is never needed. Tymen relates an experience he had with his own broadband system at home as an example. His connection speed was automatically reduced when the signal became unstable, which led to a poor broadband experience.

“The customer service representative (CSR) experience was quite good and helped me to sort out the problem,” Tymen explains. “You need a good customer support service, otherwise the customer ends up fighting against the technology themselves.”

"In order to work effectively for IoE services, omnichannel must gather journey data autonomously across all channels by exploiting the potential of digital touchpoints to improve customer centricity," Phil Bull writes.

• Orchestration

We added a question to our survey this year designed specifically to explore the challenges of managing and assuring the customer journey. Not surprisingly, end-to-end visibility topped the list, with half of respondents choosing it as a significant challenge and another 40 percent seeing it as a potential concern. The infographic below shows the top five challenges.

End-to-end visibility is at the core of the role of the experience integrator and most of the top challenges are related to orchestrating IoE services end to end. Addressing these challenges to build a platform for enabling IoE services is a primary goal for most large network operators. For more on how service providers are addressing end-to-end orchestration and management challenges, see our recent Insights Research report Orchestration: Get ready for the platform revolution.