The 5 KPI Classes

Driving Customer
Experience
Management
In today’s highly competitive and complex world, building — and sustaining — the
customer base has never been more critical for service providers. Customers now have
greater choice for devices, services and applications than ever before. This has made
customers more discerning in their service provider selection. A clear and effective
methodology for Customer Experience Management (CEM) can yield tremendous value
by adding to brand equity and reducing churn. It begins with correctly quantifying the
customer experience and using that information to arm the correct personnel with the
intelligence they need to optimize it. In this way, service providers can differentiate them-
selves from the competition. Read this paper to:
uu Understand the evolution of CEM within the service assurance market Empirix works
uu Realize the common problems service providers face when deploying CEM
 now the five KPI classes CEM solutions must encompass to ensure an
K
with its clients
uu

optimal customer experience

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT — “NEXT-GEN”

SERVICE ASSURANCE
to identify the
Historically, service assurance solutions that were deployed by either fixed or mobile
service providers focused on network surveillance and troubleshooting. These solutions
were primarily used by network operations and engineering staff to discover and then fix
appropriate
network-related issues.

Fortunately, service assurance has evolved. Service providers needed more insight, not metrics [KPIs
only on network performance but also on the services and devices they offer and the
vendors they use. More importantly, service providers wanted more insight on their
customers themselves. This requirement became the basis for a new solution segment: and Key Quality
Customer Experience Management (CEM).

CEM itself is not a new concept. It has been at the forefront of the service assurance
space for several years and has been actively embraced by fixed and mobile service pro-
Indicators (KQI)]
viders alike. Its definition often varies but for most service providers it is seen as a holistic
approach to monitoring, measuring and or alternatively, all aspects of service provider
interactions with its customers. In many cases, this goal can result in multiple major
that should be
initiatives within the service provider as companies strive to position themselves as class
leaders to capture additional market share. This is especially true in countries where the
penetration of service, be it fixed or mobile, is close to saturation. In such situations, CEM
tracked and
initiatives underpin bottom line growth.

CEM becomes an increasingly important solution as service providers endeavor to build reported.
brand loyalty in their ongoing battle to combat churn. In truth, many customers now have
next to no loyalty towards their service provider. In fact, current studies indicate that in
parts of Asia, mobile service providers now experience churn of 30% to 50% of their
customer base1, which in real terms represents millions of customers changing from one
provider to another each year.

EXAMINING CEM IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

As a concept or initiative, the way in which CEM has actually been implemented by
service providers varies widely, as do the tangible results.

Many service providers take the definition literally, looking to actually measure
the individual experiences of each and every member of their customer base. This
approach may well be aligned with the other industry drivers for Big Data, compelling

1. Strategy Analytics, Wireless Operator Performance Benchmarking Q1 2012, June 2012.

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operators to capture and store every customer interaction, network-based or otherwise. However, distilling this amount
of information into actions that, from a network or service assurance perspective, can improve (or in some cases fix)
customer experience often proves challenging. This is especially true in organizations where the initial network related Key
Performance Indicators (KPI) used to determine customer experience cannot be agreed upon or standardized between the
multiple operations and engineering teams responsible for both implementing and delivering the available services. After all,
these groups were traditionally measured by “Network or Service Availability” or “Uptime”, as well as “Number of Trouble
Tickets Generated” or “Mean Time to Resolution” — KPIs that do not directly describe the customer experience.

Even when service providers do manage to define a standard set of KPIs, developing a set of procedures for assuring —
and optimizing — those metrics can prove challenging. Some companies take the view that they want to see 100% of
customer complaints resolved immediately, where others recognize that this approach may not always be the most efficient.
This second group argues that simply addressing individual customer issues is not a good use of time as they could end up
concentrating on a problem experienced by one or two customers while neglecting other issues that could be degrading
Quality of Experience (QoE) for the majority of their customer base.

IMPLEMENTING CEM DIRECTIVES WITHIN A SERVICE PROVIDER ENVIRONMENT

So what is the answer? It actually falls somewhere in the middle. Service providers must first agree on which network and
service derived KPIs are of significance to their customers and then determine how they can be extracted, processed and
reported throughout an organization. The key is making these metrics mean enough to drive change in service provider
behavior to create a better customer experience.

GETTING STARTED: THE EMPIRIX APPROACH

As a leading provider of service assurance and analytics solutions for both fixed and mobile providers, Empirix has worked
with leading operators around the world to design and deliver CEM solutions. Empirix takes a consultative approach,
first evaluating each company’s unique strategic directives and business goals at a high level. At the same time, Empirix
thoroughly assesses the operator’s network environment and how well the company currently adheres to best practice
methodologies for assessing, managing and optimizing customer experience from the service assurance or operational
perspective.

With those insights in hand, Empirix works with its clients to identify the appropriate metrics [KPIs and Key Quality
Indicators (KQI)] that should be tracked and reported.

Only when such an assessment is made and the results mutually agreed upon can the service provider begin to
implement a true CEM solution.

THE 5 KPI CLASSES FOR DETERMINING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Fundamental to any CEM solution is defining what customer experience is in terms of how it should be measured and
why. The following five KPI classes are central to any CEM solution deployment:
uu Availability – Can customers access the network even before they attempt to access a specific device?
uu  ccessibility – Once customers have accessed the network (or in the case of mobile, physically attached to the network),
A
can they access the service requested?
uu  etainability – Once customers have accessed the service, can they retain that service as they move to different physical
R
locations?
uu Integrity – How well does the service perform as customers use it? What is their experience like?
uu  emarcation – When an issue occurs, who is the responsible party? Is it the service provider itself — therefore making
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it an “on-net” problem — or is it a third party “off-net” problem caused by a content provider, application server or even a
roaming/interconnect partner?
Using KPI classifications such as those described above, service providers can begin to align their strategic goals and met-
rics with each department responsible for ensuring that customer experience is properly delivered. For departments such
as network operations and engineering, where resources are openly recognized as minimal, the KPIs can be configured to
be in line with both performance and conformance targets. Figure 1 offers an example of a KPI that could be used to as-
sess how customers are experiencing 3G services.

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 Figure 1: 3G Customer Attach Time - Conformance

Empirix solutions don’t simply generate error counts — even by procedure, customer or group — and then compare the
results to static thresholds. This would provide little insight into customer experience. Instead, Empirix makes KPIs more
meaningful by comparing them with the actual conformance and performance targets defined for each department.

This process is clearly illustrated in Figure 1. Here, the service provider has set the optimum 3G network attach time for
all customers at two seconds. This represents a performance target for a key customer experience metric. The subsequent
thresholds then determine conformance to the service provider’s goal of 95% of all network attaches to be two seconds
or less. In the event that only 85% of all attaches conform to this target, a “warning” is triggered. Below a 75% confor-
mance rate, it triggers a “critical” alert.

Implementing KPI classes in this way not only ensures that initiatives are better aligned with internal department metrics,
but also more accurately measures true customer experience. Additionally, it allows service providers to standardize on a
set of KPIs internally, making them more relevant to the key departments within their business structure who are actually
responsible for service delivery. The net effect is a clear directive: complete with an understanding of what customer
experience truly means, how it can be maintained and, more importantly, how it can be improved.

CONTINUOUS REFINEMENT
No initiative as important as Customer Experience Management should remain a static program. Empirix continuously
works with clients to ensure that the KPIs tracked not only constantly align with a service provider’s internal directive,
but also ensure optimal customer experience.

The process doesn’t just stop there. Empirix will continue to work with the service provider on a wraparound consultancy
on an ongoing basis. This process ensures that the KPIs being realized continue to align with the service providers’ internal
directives, as well as represent the optimum levels of customer experience.

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