by Stephanie Sculley, Head of Analytics Practice, Advanced Consulting Services West at Nokia
Today’s networks are complex to say the least. Because of that, it can be difficult to determine the underlying cause of an issue that’s hindering the customer experience.
For some communications service providers (CSPs), chasing the wrong suspect can result in wasted time and effort while the true criminal runs free continuing to frustrate customers.
This unproductive cycle is prevented with root-cause analysis, which identifies the actions that are needed to solve problems, minimizes churn and keeps customers happy, or at least happier. Not only does this save time, but it also helps CSPs keep their decisions customer-focused.
Nonetheless, there are three areas where CSPs often get stuck when trying to conduct root-cause analysis to address these problems, but fortunately, switching up one’s mindset can help to mitigate these common errors. Let’s find out how.
You Don’t Know If You Don’t Ask…a Lot: How to Solve the Problem with Meaningful Questions
A cold has similar symptoms as an allergy, the flu or even a more serious diagnosis. So, if someone says they have a cough or a runny nose, the doctor needs to ask the right questions to come to an accurate diagnosis. This may even involve doing research or even consulting other professionals, who may have experience in other areas.
While not the exact same scenario, this is a similar situation to what CSPs face when trying to determine the cause of network issues. Performance and service-related issues can originate from various sources from device manufacturers, content or app providers, user behavior, device manufacturers, or even the network itself, making it near impossible to figure out the cause of problems on one’s own.
Thus, it’s critical that CSPs ask the right questions to determine the cause of lagging key performance indicators (KPIs), growing customer complaints and churn.
Finding a true root cause can be like peeling an onion; there are many layers of investigation. With each new layer exposed, it’s vital to analyze and inspect the relevant details as moving too quickly with a possible solution could result in breaking KPIs in other areas.
To assist in the root-cause analysis process, many turn to artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). However, while excellent and essential, these tools also require deep, hands-on experience and the correct data to generate conclusive solutions — ultimately bringing back up the importance of asking the right questions.
Finding a Needle in a Needle Stack: How to Work with Data
Aside from asking the right questions, CSPs looking for the root cause of customer experience issues can also get hung up on vast amounts of data.
Most CSPs have invested significant time, resources and energy into integrating sensors and devices throughout their operations with the aim to collect meaningful data. But instead, the data often has the opposite effect as CSPs are left with massive amounts of information that area struggle to sort through and generate value and actionable insights off of.
To truly capitalize on their data and the findings it uncovers, CSPs need specialized tools along with industry expertise and advanced domain insight. Fortunately, telco data consultants who have worked with various CSPs in different industries can utilize the best practices and lessons learned from these experiences to truly investigate the large pool of data and uncover the most meaningful insights to determine the correct root cause and best course of action.
The Customer Really Comes First: How to Start Making Customer-Centric Decisions
The last area where CSPs get stuck is with their decision-making process. Commonly, CSPs focus on a performance-driven approach to decision-making. This puts additional emphasis on areas such as the quality and capabilities of segments of their network. However, this narrow focus on just the radio access network (RAN) or the core can have a net negative impact on the business’s operations when it does not simultaneously better customer experience.
By focusing on the customer end-to-end in the decision-making process, CSPs can ultimately keep customers happy instead of causing their eyes to wander to competitors. But doing so requires a deep understanding and knowledge of the true cause of service complaints to properly address issues affecting the customer experience.
Take the example of customers complaining about dropped calls. At a surface level, it may seem like a solution to invest in optimizing network performance in their area, even if it may risk increasing consumer costs. However, the customer may still be affected by the end-to-end service path, which means that the isolated optimizations might not even improve their experience. Even worse, these increased costs, which may be portrayed as higher service fees as a result of the optimization, could cause the customer to ultimately choose a different provider.
As a general principle of end-to-end customer-focused decision-making, an investment isn’t effective if it doesn’t better the customer experience. And as a part of that, it’s crucial to uncover and act on true root causes.
And if issues continue to be unclear or complicated, it may be worthwhile to collaborate with an external partner, who can provide expertise and perspective when investigating root causes.
Not only would an external provider supply broad industry insight based on ongoing work with various global CSPs, but they also have the domain knowledge and AI/ML expertise needed to ask the right questions, analyze data and uncover the true root cause of any issue – improving end-to-end customer experience by ensuring the customers’ needs are addressed head-on.
