Rob Walker

Churn is one of the single greatest problems facing the major Telco’s today. With outdated back end systems trying to keep up with regulation, competition, and an increasingly demanding consumer, many of these companies are seeking out new technologies to help them streamline and improve the customer experience.

Telecommunications companies have learned the hard way that if you ignore the customer experience, consumers take their business elsewhere, and it’s all too easy to do. Industry headlines are drawing attention to this issue in 2008: Blogs from desperate customers trying to get Verizon and other carriers to follow through on service requests appear regularly on the Internet; Sprint admitted that delivering poor customer experience to their customers led to the loss of more than 2 million of them.

Fortunately, solutions exist today that can help Telco companies churn-proof their businesses. Next-generation CEM solutions that employ predictive decisioning to...

In 2007 we saw organizations rally around Customer Experience practices. Many companies across a wide range of industries – insurance, banking, telecom to name a few -- now have Customer Experience Management (CEM) ambitions, departments, and directors. Much effort, both by organizations and CEM vendors, was understandably focused on delivering a good customer experience. In 2008, we expect this to continue in full force, accelerated by the early successes of the past year. However, we will also witness the introduction of technology that enables companies to plan and simulate the customer experience.

Unlike CRM -- that focuses on the operational aspects of the customer relationship – CEM emphasizes predictive decisioning – or in simpler terms, all the stuff you need to know to anticipate customers’ needs, interests, and likely behaviors. It is just this predictive capability that will allow organizations to first design the customer experience strategies they want to...