Reflections on My Trip to Kazakhstan

I recently had the honour of travelling to Almaty to lead the largest ever Finnish-Kazakhstani business delegation regarding trade and economic cooperation. Ninety representatives from 55 companies were involved in addition to Finland’s minister for European affairs and foreign trade, Alexander Stubb, and other high-ranking officials. Altogether, 13 business sectors were represented; the information and communications technology (ICT) team consisted of TeliaSonera, Nokia Siemens Networks and Comptel.

At the delegation, the key priorities outlined were attracting Finnish investments into the Kazakhstan economy and furthering innovation and new technologies between the two regions. What’s interesting is that, for the past ten years, Kazakhstan has been the third, fastest growing economy in the world after China and Qatar.

We also had the opportunity to meet with both communications service provider (CSP) KCell (a customer of Comptel’s) and Minister Stubb, which certainly proved to be a highlight of the trip. Our head of Europe East, Timo Koistinen, with regional sales director, Sergey Biryukov, accompanied me in a tournament, trying to meet all of the local service providers and naturally network with the other delegation attendees. Timo and Sergey succeeded in speaking to the other three CSPs in the region, KazakhTelecom, Tele2 and Beeline, first, and since they moved so fast, they also experienced the “magic touch”—the hand of the president of Kazakhstan on the top of the Bayterek Monument in Astana. My schedule was very tight with several meetings to ensure the whole trip went smoothly for the whole Business Team Finland.

In all, this type of event is an excellent way of promoting Finland abroad. I’m confident that many of us succeeded in building new relationships with the companies in the region while networking with our Finnish business colleagues.

Compelling Cases: Comptel Convergent Mediation in Action

Last week, we introduced our new blog post series, Compelling Cases, where we showcased a Southern European operator looking to stimulate growth and accelerate revenue generation. With the help of Comptel Fulfillment, the operator was able to implement a more productive service delivery process. Continuing on with our series showcasing Comptel in action, today we look at another major European operator that drastically simplified its network complexity and gained significant cost savings with Comptel Convergent Mediation

Context
As is the case with many communications service providers (CSPs), while experiencing mobile subscriber growth this leading European CSP was also faced with more network transactions that needed to be gathered and converted into billable records. In particular, the CSP was seeking a solution that would allow it to more easily manage the collection and transformation of network billing transactions from its five operating companies with various network types. To accomplish this, the CSP turned to Comptel Convergent Mediation.  

Conversion
With Comptel’s Convergent Mediation, the CSP was able to harness its multiple networks into one unified platform where billing records from more than 40 million subscribers is now being efficiently processed – making for the largest single subscribers’ billing records processing system in Europe. Running on Linux-based hardware, Comptel’s solution is highly scalable so that the CSP can manage billions of events per day. And, the CSP now has the processing power to enable future growth with LTE transactions.

Completion
This complex mediation consolidation project was delivered in phases: The first phase was finalised in Q4 2011, within the same year that the contract was closed (Q1 2011). The completion of the second phase of the delivery project occurred in Q1 2012 and set the precedent for handling several billions of billing records generated by millions of subscribers in a single mediation system on daily basis.

Visit our website to view this announcement, or see more third-party validated case studies, visit TechValidate-Comptel Solutions

Five Ways to Enrich the Customer Experience

By Samantha Tanner, Telecoms IQ at IQPC

Customers are the most important part of a Communication Service Provider’s (CSP) business; after all, if a CSP doesn’t have any customers, they don’t have a business. Therefore, your customer experience strategy must reflect how important they are to you.

When putting together your customer experience model, take into consideration these five key aspects:

1. Emotions: Decide what emotions you are trying to invoke in your customers, and design an engaging customer experience around that.

Colin Shaw, founder of Beyond Philosophy believes that the process of turning customers into advocates has to be thought through—what does it mean to make them an advocate? What would it take to make them one?

According to Comptel’s CTO office director, Greg Scullard, the details of every event or transaction in customers’ lifecycles are key to winning hearts, minds and wallets.

2. Advocacy: Encourage advocacy by working toward a long-lasting customer relationship.

Andrew Williams, director of customer experience for Orange FT Group, believes that “the reason (advocacy is) important is that customers who are genuinely engaged with you and your service(s) are likely to stay longer and spend more money by buying more services or more expensive plans. But also, importantly, (customers) are prepared to go out there and tell their friends and family about what a great experience they’re having.”

3. Engagement: Actively seek out what services or actions will make your customers happy. Think about what your customers want and what they might require from you. For example, are they increasingly setting up smartphone plans? If so, one core desire will likely be fast data / Internet access.

Olivier Suard, marketing director at Comptel, explains that operators need to go the extra mile and be more interactive with their customers. By leveraging their OSS and network data, they can develop a complete picture of their customers’ behaviours, which will enable them to proactively engage with them, anticipate problems and ensure their satisfaction.

Likewise, be sure to listen to customers’ feedback. Subscribers are increasingly turning to social media as a customer service tool. Karl Whitelock, director, OSS/BSS business strategy, Stratecast agrees, finding that “what is most striking today is the speed with which customers react through social media. If a customer has a bad experience […] there can be a movement of thousands of others demanding a more equitable solution in just a few hours.” As mindsets change, so do the channels that customers want to be engaged through—be sure to listen and take note.

Dr. Nicola Millard, experience futurologist for BT Global Services, concurs: “The Internet’s given us a lot more choice than we used to have. So we’re seeing more people seeking advice via Googling or asking their social media connections. Often, the organisation is the last port of call.”

4. Switch Focus: Change your mindset from being ROI-driven to being customer focused, and the ROI will come naturally.

Fifty percent of the customer experience is based on how the customer feels, explains Shaw. Relaying this message and integrating it into the way a company operates can be a challenge, especially when the overarching mindset is focused strictly on ROI. Because of this, he believes, it’s important to put yourself in the customers’ shoes. And over the past two years, , CSPs have really tried to focus on investing in customer care and driving brand loyalty rather than simply pushing products.

5. Never Be Satisfied: Keep going back to the drawing board and ask yourself if there is any way to further enrich or improve your customer experience.

Take, for example, Orange FT Group’s customer experience strategy. Every time a new product or service is launched the company maps out its customers’ journeys to try and understand what customers will want and what their needs are.

Emilie Smith, customer experience manager at Orange FT Group, says: “I think one of the things that we found is that sometimes there’s not an understanding across all areas of what actually happens, particularly at that beginning stage where a customer is doing his/her research. So, one of the things we do is take our staff back to being customers—we’ve seen that they then really understand the experience.”

In conclusion, if you want your customers to be loyal, and thus maximise revenue, work on your overall customer experience strategy. It goes a long way in portraying to your customers what kind of relationship you are hoping to build with them.