Conversations I Am Having

I realized the other day that it had been some time since I took time out of my day to write down my thoughts on my blog. I also realized that what annoys me most is when I find a blog that I like and the author doesn't write everyday. So, if I ever really want people to visit my blog on a regular basis and engage in conversations about the topics that interest me and others, then I need to make sure that I write much more consistently. Today is a start to that commitment!

Over the next few days and weeks, I am going to write about my experiences in the Service Provider market and where the focus seems to be and maybe where it should be for those companies to start creating a truly authentic customer experience. The first few blogs that I will write will be focused primarily on what business challenges are being addressed most frequently by Service Providers. Then I will try to tackle how they are trying to use technology to enable change and improvement in those core areas.

As a precursor to the next few weeks, here are the areas that I see most Service Providers in the communication market space focusing on:

1. Offer Management- This takes many forms and means slightly different things to different people. But ultimately it comes down to being able to ensure that you put the right offer in front of the right person at the right time to either keep more customers or bring on more new customers.

2. Reducing Cost to Serve- In a nutshell, this is about creating a service organization that is able to meet the needs of customers that are signing up for increasingly more complex devices and services.

3. Intelligent Decision Making- This business need can take many different forms, but ultimately companies are looking at two different models to make better decisions while servicing customers, Static/Historical Decision Making and Real Time Decision Making.

4. Enforcement- Again, different things to different people, but the area I see this most impacting the business is around ensuring people are doing the right things at the right time to meet the customers needs while at the same time doing what is right for the business.

5. Social Media- This is a big one, but from my perspective, not as big as people are making it out to be. I will take a look from a customer perspective on this one and hopefully bring in to the conversation insight that will help drive more dialog.

All of these areas, in relation to the customer experience, could take up many blog posts and fill up many conversations. The key is, this is what customers are talking about right now in their service organizations. This is the meat and what better thing to discuss than the stuff that is making leaders think.

Should be a fun couple of weeks and I look forward to your feedback and comments.