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Keep Customer out of Installation, Save Money, Webinar Told

Radically revamping installation and security at the user end is key to cutting costs and making triple-play services profitable, Richard Caballero, Supportsoft dir.- digital mktg., said in a USTelecom vendors “webinar” Wed. Complexity is on the rise along with bandwidth requirements, so keeping clients from needing too much support-center time has to be a primary goal as carriers bring new video and data customers into the fold, and getting them from the start is key to this.

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A customer with triple play is 60% likelier to churn from the package if even one service has consistent problems, said Caballero. Customers will be drawn to the triple-play, but at the end of the day they just want to know “is my network gonna work the way it used to work?” he said. This is compounded by the greater complexity of new services, he said. Triple-play IPTV runs, for example, have had problems with “jiggly TV,” where the video signal skips or freezes when the phone rings.

Carriers will waste valuable resources resolving these issues if they don’t automate properly, Caballero said. He cited an Ovum report that a single support call can equal a month’s ARPU for a base-level DSL user -- the ones most likely to call. Customer service is a differentiator, he said, but it has to be efficient and cost-effective: many calls come in the initial steps of joining a network, a factor compounded by the “complexity” of triple-play networks. If carriers work with manufacturers and interoperability software developers -- Supportsoft does just that -- to get full-fledged automated diagnostics in place before the user even begins installation, valuable dollars will be saved from the start, he said.

“What better time to make sure my customers have the latest and greatest firmware time than installation?” asked Caballero. Security can be addressed “right at install,” when wireless access parameters can be set automatically, without needing to be cued by the user, as soon as his network is functional. “Wireless [data] is a huge [support] call driver,” he said, because “customers simply don’t understand how you set up security, especially in tight quarters in metro areas.” He said Supportsoft and competitors are working with carriers to provide a “robust mechanism” for creating access filters without human intervention.

Another force jacking up support-desk costs are routine “novice” mistakes by users, Caballero said. Lost passwords, simple e-mail and browser setting questions and the like loom among these, he said. BellSouth is working on a solution to automate password recovery and setting reconfiguration while balancing security concerns, he said. Carriers need to work “self help tools” into the triple-play platform, anticipating common problems and addressing them before a user even senses the need to make a call, he said.

In hardware, 2 issues stand out, Caballero said: (1) Interoperability must be a key goal, since autoconfiguration servers or the software on top “have to be able to talk to any device.” Triple-play networks need more interoperability, he said, simply to keep churn down, and to improve diagnostics, a big factor in protecting margins. (2) Industry hasn’t “really cracked the nut on home wiring.” No single technology has emerged as a winner, while several, from coax to Ethernet, have major pluses and minuses. New wireless video streaming technology is just around the corner in the U.S., “a step up” from typical Wi-Fi data transfer, which loses too many packets and has a high risk of interference, Caballero said. Once perfected, in a year or 2, he said, wiring could be less of a concern.