Think IPTV…..Think Support Automation

By James Morehead, SupportSoft Inc. vice president of product management and marketing

In today’s competitive market, telcos worldwide are facing significant market challenges to increase revenue. Developments such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) have contributed to decreasing prices of individual services. To remain competitive with traditional telco and cable companies, digital service providers (DSPs) are putting together more complex offerings, such as IPTV services, and offering “triple play” bundles that include IPTV, VoIP and high speed data services.

For many service providers, rolling out new, value-added services has become a necessary strategy to reduce customer churn and increase average revenue per subscriber (ARPU).  Informa forecasts rapid growth in IPTV through to 2010, when 25.9 million subscribers globally will generate more than US$10 billion in revenue.

Telcos are investing heavily to upgrade their infrastructure systems to effectively scale to deliver lPTV services, and making these systems work seamlessly to deliver new services such as IPTV is a significant undertaking.  After the delivery infrastructure is successfully put in place, the single largest expense is the ongoing cost of customer service. 

There are still significant customer challenges involved in successfully deploying IPTV, especially as part of a complex, triple play offering.  Deploying IPTV can be significantly more difficult than traditional broadband services – though customer expect at least the same level of customer service.  For most service providers, delivering a high-quality experience to IPTV customers is increasingly a primary goal – DSPs understand that customer experience is key in avoiding customer churn and maintaining service profitability.

Given that IPTV is a relatively new technology, DSPs should realistically expect deployment issues, particularly during installation.  Research has shown that 60% of DSL subscribers expect to encounter problems during IPTV installation.[1]  Customer issues such as installation, support, and service quality will significantly affect operating expense (OPEX), and service providers need to be prepared.

According to industry analyst Ovum, the majority of calls to service providers customer services teams are created during the installation process or at times of service failure.  With Ovum estimating that the average customer services call costs providers €15, the success of IPTV services can often depend on how quickly and economically problems can be resolved when they happen, and preventing them from happening in the first place.

Support automation – paving the way for effective and profitable IPTV roll-out

Providing a positive customer experience from installation onwards requires tools that not only ensure the effective delivery of IPTV, but also assist both field and call centre personnel in diagnosing and resolving problems as they occur.  For all providers, the goal is to increase ARPU and customer loyalty, while reducing customer churn and facilitating early adoption. 

While IPTV and other next generation services represent significant revenue opportunities for DSPs, they can come at the expense of profitability if the costs associated with traditional customer service are not considered.  These potential issues need to be addressed if providers expect rapid customer adoption of value-added services.

Support automation, or the ability to automate many of the traditional manual steps in the customer experience from initial service installation to ongoing support, is becoming essential to achieving these goals and providing a high return on investment.  Solutions to pre-emptively, proactively and “just in time” solve problems to help avoid problems from happening in the first place, solve them more quickly when they do occur, and allocate the best resources towards solving customer problems are increasingly at the core of providers’ next generation networks.

Automatic verification of the quality of all services delivered to the premises, such as IPTV, combined with a 360º view of the customer environment for accurate problem diagnosis and resolution (both a premises and network view), is becoming critical to efficient customer service.  Delivering a high-quality experience to customers is a primary goal for most service providers. 

Research has shown that 37% of European broadband subscribers expect customer service to improve or improve significantly when receiving all three triple play services from one provider[2], yet currently customer services representatives do not even have the visibility into the network they need to fully support broadband delivery, let alone additional services.  Additionally, they are frequently not able to manage the configuration and firmware changes needed in this rapidly changing environment without first escalating to a technically sophisticated Tier 2/3 technician.  This adds to operating costs as well as customer frustration, making adoption and loyalty even bigger problems.

For DSPs, support automation solutions are key in efficiently managing the complexity of service such as IPTV, helping  provide a consistent level of product quality and reliability.  Where possible, telcos should build on their existing reputation for reliability by developing the capability to capture and automate remote customer premises equipment (CPE) management best practices. 

Across Europe and worldwide, service providers are recognising the benefits of automated support and service verification for IPTV services.  For example, software from SupportSoft, Inc. has been deployed by Belgacom to enable its broadband subscribers to quickly and easily self-install a new IPTV connection, automatically assisting in verifying customers’ system characteristics with the latest software as needed, and providing interactive instructions to connect all the key components together.  Belgacom recognises that getting new IPTV subscribers smoothly started with a great service experience is critical to customer retention.

Market opportunity – competitive advantages
There is a clear opportunity for the service provider to over-deliver, and exceed customer expectations by avoiding the problems they expect – ultimately leading to increased subscriber bases and market share.  DSPs that are able to deliver the most compelling experience from initial installation through ongoing support will be better positioned to sell additional services and maintain a premium price.  Providers can gain competitive advantage by meeting and exceeding customer expectations for the delivery of IPTV, starting at the point of installation.  Successful IPTV deployment must be easy to use and easy to install – after all, we are all used to a very high standard of television services. 

Providing customer service representatives and field technicians with the ability to check service conditions or quality at their points of entry can help isolate the problem to in-home wiring or devices, or to the network.  Within the customer premise residence, factors like home wiring and service usage can affect voice and video quality beyond the control of the service provider.  Without a thorough system check, one service call can inadvertently lead to another. 

Remote management and zero-touch configuration of CPE devices

Zero-touch configuration enables "plug and play" service configuration to simplify the customer experience when CPE devices first connect to the service provider network.  Specifications such as the DSL Forum’s TR-069 enable home access gateways (and ultimately set-top boxes) to be remotely configured, managed and diagnosed.  Remote management of the CPE that enables IPTV is critical for robust service offerings.  Automated firmware updates, based on criteria gathered about the customer’s CPE and networking environment, can prevent known problems from impacting the customer experience.

Subscriber-driven service level changes via a self-service portal

Customers can increase the speed of their broadband connection, or add new services such as IPTV, without the need to call a service technician.  This saves consumers time in setting-up new services as well as avoiding dealing with call centres or home visits from installation technicians – and ensures an effective return on investment for providers.

Verify all connections and services
Automated service verification tools allow service providers to automatically determine if the customer network is connected correctly to the in-home router, the service provider’s network and services, and the internet, to lower costs and lessen the prospects of customer frustration and churn.  Moreover, it can help ensure that one triple play service isn’t conflicting with another, causing the need for a repeat service call or visit.

Create a simple user experience
By employing widely available technology – such as HTML, Flash, web-based video, email, or instant messaging for interactive questions – service providers can create introductory instructional modules that help users with basic installation.  Premises-based automation can pre-qualify the customer’s environment, and analyse existing operating system and network conditions, performing network interface and protocol checks to ensure there is a network connection.

There are a number of key components in automating the subscriber’s home environment to facilitate a reliable service deployment and positive customer experience.  Robust and data-driven best practices for error handling can help resolve issues quickly across a wide range of products and guide the user to help resolve problems.  Flexible architecture can enable service providers to transition to fully automated installations, and support integration systems allow customer services representatives to address all problems and bring each subscriber on line with a single trouble ticket.

Using support automation software, a “golden record” from the installation can be created, allowing customer services representatives and field engineers to diagnose problems without costly or unneeded technician visits – “truck rolls”.  By automatically creating and storing a snapshot of the last known good working state, problems can be diagnosed and resolved much more quickly.  Service quality verification can help service providers improve customer service and lower the cost of support in increasingly complex services such as VoIP and IPTV.

Profitable adoption of IPTV services is built on exceptional customer service, and support automation solutions and best practices are at the heart of service providers’ plans for a structured and methodical approach for installation, provisioning and problem resolution. 

For more information visit http://www.supportsoft.com/.