… but it does answer questions.
Earlier this week we discussed the fairly obvious structural shift towards customer-centricity. The telco industry is certainly riding this wave. The big telcos that I’ve worked with have certainly picked up their surfboards, but still don’t necessarily know their customers as well as they could.
They know the WHAT:
– what services their customers are buying
– which service mix each customer has bought
– what their usage patterns are
– certainly what their ARPU is
– what functions they perform
– etc
But I’ve found they don’t always know WHO (in a demographic banding sense rather than a breach-of-privacy sense), or the psychology of why each demographic band behaves the way it does.
By nature, the big telcos have big customer bases. Big customer bases could tend to mean broad demographics. But that’s an assumption.
As OSS implementers, it’s our jobs to help our customers to understand and help their customers better. We make carrier services more reliable and more efficient, but without knowing who uses those services, perhaps our customers are not always using our tools to make their products / services more effective.
Our OSS and BSS store lots of data. Data doesn’t talk but it does answer questions. Our job is to ask strategically important questions for our customers and their customers.
What are the strategic questions that you ask of your OSS / BSS that consistently give the most effective answers? I’m sure every one of you have asked questions (or generated insights) that have spawned lightbulb moments for your customers. Would you like to share any of your stories below?