Communication service providers in the time of COVID-19

Think about it. Without the efforts of communication service providers (CSPs) who handled a massive surge in traffic patterns, it would be much more difficult to work from home, learn online, or binge Tiger King. However, while they rose to the challenge, it also exposed the need for more agility in communications operations, sparking a renewed focus on the need for service transformation.

Going forward, CSPs need to find a way to be more flexible, while simultaneously reducing costs in reaction to a slowing economy. And they will have to do it in a way that delivers an improved experience for agents, operations teams, and customers.

Connecting the customer, the care, and the NOC
The challenge today is to create proactive service experiences that connect the customer, the care organization, and the network operations center (NOC).

Imagine you’re an enterprise CIO during a major outage. The last thing you want is to be in the dark, unsure of what’s going on and when the outage will be resolved.

Now imagine that the moment an outage occurs you immediately receive a text message with information on when it will be restored and any workarounds you can put in place. If you do contact customer care, you get quick answers and an estimated time for a fix. Meanwhile, within the operator, the NOC team can manage the affected services and track the SLA burn as they resolve the outage.   

This is a perfect example of a proactive service experience, and it is quickly becoming the gold standard for successful telecommunications companies. It can only be done when the NOC, with its context from network monitoring and network inventory data, can provide the relevant outage information to customer care, who can then use it it to alert the customer in real time.
 

New products make it possible
At ServiceNow it is our mission to create these amazing, proactive, and connected service experiences. Which is why I’m so excited to introduce two new telecommunications products, Telecommunications Service Management and Telecommunications Network Performance Management, which will be generally available later this year.

Built on the Now Platform®, the products will extend ServiceNow’s capabilities in customer service and network operations with new telecommunications-specific apps for Proactive Customer Care and Automated Service Assurance. Product highlights include:

• End-to-end telecommunications service workflows will enable service providers to manage network and customer-initiated changes and troubles across services, automate issue resolution, and keep customers informed in their channel of choice.
• TMForum Open API-based OSS integrations and event correlation capabilities will help service providers quickly identify network issues and the associated service and customer impacts for faster resolution.
• eBonding will enable service providers to offer a direct connection for their enterprise customers, delivering a superior experience at a significantly reduced cost.

Together, these products can help pivot the experience from reactive to proactive and connected. The result? Significantly reduced costs in terms of call avoidance, and flexibility for the future as customers migrate to SDN and 5G-based services.

It’s a win for everyone—the customer, the agent, and the CSP. Welcome to the future of digital workflows for the communications industry.

Use of Forward–Looking Statements
This blog contains “forward–looking statements” regarding our expectations, future plans and performance. Forward–looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward–looking statements. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward–looking statements we make. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward–looking statements include: (i) delays and unexpected difficulties and expenses in making generally available the telecommunications products, (ii) uncertainty whether sales of such products will justify these investments and (iii) changes in the regulatory landscape relevant to enterprises operating in the telecommunications industry. We undertake no obligation, and do not intend, to update these forward–looking statements

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