Empowering enterprise customers: Key to a competitive edge in voice services

If you are a voice service provider, you’d probably agree that it’s high time to talk about the elephant in the room – keeping your enterprise customers happy in this cutthroat market. We all know the drill: they want top-notch quality, rock-bottom prices, and oh yeah, they expect you to move mountains. Sounds familiar?

Now, imagine this scenario: It’s Monday morning, and your biggest client keeps calling about dropped calls. Again. You’re scrambling to figure out what’s going on, all while trying to keep them from jumping ship to your competitor. Stressful, right?

But what if you could flip the script? What if you could hand your customers the tools to dig into their own data, spot issues before they become crises, and actually understand what’s happening with their voice services?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Some savvy providers are already doing this, with some actually compensating customers for dropped VoLTE calls. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!

So, are you ready to turn your data into your secret weapon? Let’s dive in and see how you can make this work.

Data Transparency: Your Ticket to Customer Loyalty (and Sanity)

Let’s face it– in the world of CSPs, transparency isn’t always the go-to strategy. Yet it absolutely should be. Let’s explore why opening the curtain on your data can transform your customer relationships and operational efficiency:

1. First off, let’s talk about differentiation. In a market where everyone’s offering similar services, being the brave soul who says, “Here’s what’s really going on with your service” can set you miles apart, especially in this field, where many hesitate to share such insights.
2. Now, imagine turning your data into a shiny new service. That’s right – Data as a Service. It’s not just about enhancing your brand value; It’s more than a feature; it’s a value proposition that enhances both your brand and customer satisfaction. By transforming raw data into actionable insights, you’re not just providing a service—you’re empowering your customers with knowledge.
3. One of the most tangible benefits? A potential reduction in customer support tickets. When clients can see that an issue originates on their end, they’re more likely to attempt troubleshooting before reaching out. This self-service approach not only reduces your support load but also fosters a sense of control and understanding among your customer base.
4. For more complex issues, this transparency opens doors to premium troubleshooting services. When customers identify problems they can’t resolve, you’re positioned as the expert solution provider. It’s an opportunity to offer additional value—and potentially, additional revenue streams.
5. Perhaps most importantly – customers love it, even if they didn’t ask for it to begin with. They genuinely appreciate this level of openness. There’s a profound impact on trust and loyalty when you provide them with the tools to understand their service quality. It transforms the provider-client relationship from transactional to collaborative

In essence, data transparency isn’t just about sharing information—it’s about building stronger, more informed partnerships with your customers. It’s your pathway to reduced operational stress, increased customer satisfaction, and a standout position in the market. 

From Concept to Reality: Case Studies and Insights from Industry Leaders

Now, let’s take a look at how the big players in the CSP world are turning self-serve portals from cool ideas into game-changing tools. Interestingly, work on customer portals often goes hand in hand with internal projects to exploit precious data delivered by monitoring. Here are some examples of how industry giants are putting data to work:

1. NOC Dashboards: Picture a mission control center, but for network nerds. These dashboards give ops teams a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening in real time. Spot an issue? Bam! They’re on it before you can say “dropped call.”
2. Third-party System Integration: Think of this as getting all your tech to play nice together. It’s about making data flow smoother than your favorite streaming service.
3. Customer Portals: This is where CSPs are really showing their cards – in a good way – They’re handing customers the keys to their own service quality data. It’s like letting them peek behind the curtain, which customers highly appreciate.

As we get into the nitty-gritty of some real-world examples, you’ll see how these tools aren’t just making life easier for operation teams. They’re reshaping how CSPs and customers interact, turning what used to be a one-way street into a two-way conversation.

Case # 1: The Enterprise Portal Success Story

This case study examines how a leading CSP developed and implemented a comprehensive self-serve portal for its enterprise customers, including major insurance companies, banks, and large government agencies. These organizations, managing thousands to tens of thousands of phone lines, required in-depth insights into their service usage and quality metrics. This wasn’t just any old portal – it’s a slick, user-friendly interface powered by Voipfuture Qrystal that lets these enterprise heavyweights check their service usage and quality FAST. 

So, what’s under the hood of this Enterprise Portal? Let’s break it down:

1. The big picture: Right off the bat, customers get a bird’s-eye view of all their interconnection sites.
2. Access key performance indicators at a glance, including:

• Incoming and outgoing call volumes
• Good Minute Ratio (GMR) for voice quality assessment
• Overall Service State, a composite metric of relevant KPIs

3. Drill down into specific site data for detailed analysis, featuring:

• Total established calls and average call duration
• Failed and unconnected call statistics
• Concurrent call volumes for capacity planning
• Detailed GMR breakdowns

The portal’s development was initially driven by customer demand, with several major clients making it a prerequisite for contract signing. Fast forward a few years, and this portal isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore. It’s the standard for all major customers.

Key benefits of the Enterprise Portal include:

1. Enhanced transparency: Customers gain direct access to their service performance data, fostering trust and open communication with the CSP.
2. Proactive service management: Enterprises can identify trends, anticipate capacity needs, and address potential issues before they escalate.
3. Improved customer relations: The portal serves as a foundation for regular, data-driven discussions between the CSP and its clients.
4. Operational efficiency: By empowering customers with self-serve options, the CSP reduces the strain on its support resources.

In the end, this isn’t just about fancy graphs and real-time data (though let’s be honest, that stuff is pretty cool). It’s about building trust, fostering partnerships, and giving customers the power to understand and optimize their services. The success of this Enterprise Portal underscores the growing importance of data transparency and customer empowerment in maintaining competitive advantage in today’s telecom market. 

Case #2: How Data Visibility Reshapes Wholesale Telecom

In the fiercely competitive and notoriously low-margin world of international wholesale voice services, one carrier has found a way to stand out from the crowd. By leveraging internal service quality data through an innovative wholesale portal, this provider has transformed transparency into a powerful differentiator, attracting and retaining large accounts in an industry where every advantage counts.

The wholesale portal, developed by Voipfuture, offers an unprecedented level of insight into service performance. Its focus is not solely on the carrier’s performance, but the portal provides a holistic view of the entire call journey, including the quality of traffic delivered by customers themselves. This comprehensive approach addresses a critical challenge in the enterprise and wholesale markets: the complex, multi-network nature of call routing where quality can be impacted at various points along the path.

Key features of the wholesale portal include:

1. Granular performance metrics: Users can view service performance data broken down by country and specific destination, offering a detailed understanding of call quality across different routes.
2. Dual-direction quality analysis: The portal displays media quality for both inbound and outbound traffic separately, allowing for a fair and transparent assessment of service quality from all parties involved.
3. Time-based quality tracking: A graphical interface shows how outbound media quality (measured by Good Minute Ratio or GMR) changes over time, enabling the identification of trends and potential issues.
4. Deep-dive capabilities: Users can drill down into specific country/destination combinations to access high-resolution quality data, including:

• Detailed inbound and outbound media quality metrics
• Reasons for quality degradation (e.g., packet loss, jitter)
• The ability to examine individual Session Border Controller (SBC) interfaces

5. Comprehensive call statistics: The portal provides essential metrics such as call attempts, minutes exchanged, network efficiency ratios, and average call durations.
6. Root cause analysis: When quality issues are detected, the portal offers insights into potential causes, displaying various forms of loss and jitter that may be impacting performance.

This level of transparency helps avoid the “blame game” often associated with quality issues in multi-network environments by clearly isolating problem sources. Additionally, it empowers both the carrier and its customers to take proactive measures in addressing quality concerns, fostering a collaborative approach to service improvement.

The impact of this portal has been significant. Major customers given access to this tool have provided overwhelmingly positive feedback, appreciating the unprecedented level of insight into their voice services. For the carrier, this transparency has become a key selling point, differentiating them in a market where price is often the primary consideration.

Moreover, the portal’s capabilities extend beyond customer relations. It serves as a powerful internal tool for the carrier, allowing them to continuously monitor and optimize their network performance. The ability to drill down to individual SBC interfaces enables precise troubleshooting and network optimization.

Data Versatility: From Customer Portals to NOC Dashboards

The same wholesale VoIP provider from the previous case, also leverages Voipfuture’s Qrystal platform to maximize data utility for internal operations. The VoIP Interconnection Dashboard provides a comprehensive matrix view of network performance, breaking down KPIs like NER, SER, ACD, and MOS by carriers and destinations. This allows for quick issue identification and resolution.

The same dataset powers a global network infrastructure performance map, visualizing interhub media performance across regions. This geographical representation enables easy spotting of potential bottlenecks or failing connections.

By utilizing a single, flexible dataset for multiple purposes, the company ensures consistency in reporting, enhances operational efficiency, and gains a competitive edge in customer service. This approach demonstrates the power of well-designed data architecture in transforming both customer relationships and internal operations in the VoIP industry

Parting Thoughts: Key Ingredients for Successful Data Portals

Implementing effective data portals for CSPs hinges on a few critical factors. First and foremost is data confidence. You and your customers need to trust that the information you’re providing accurately reflects network performance. This means avoiding overly optimistic metrics that don’t align with real user experiences.

Secondly, comprehensive data collection is crucial. This involves capturing both signaling data, which indicates service availability, and media KPIs that reflect in-call user experience. The ability to verify and correlate this data is essential for building trust and providing actionable insights.

Lastly, the presentation of this data must be clear, intuitive, and tailored to the needs of different stakeholders, whether they’re internal teams or customers. By focusing on these key elements, CSPs can create powerful data portals that not only improve operational efficiency but also enhance customer relationships and drive competitive advantage in the market.