Key Performance Indicators require customer-centricity to guarantee optimal customer experience & network outsourcing effectiveness

24 October 2012, Newbury, UK - Arieso has today revealed that mobile network operators are using out of date “Key Performance Indicators” (KPIs) to monitor network performance. Outdated KPIs leave operators unable to meet ever-evolving subscriber demands and effectively manage network outsourcing agreements. Current indicators such as cell level accessibility and retainability support network performance but offer little to enhance the customer experience.

According to Arieso, current KPIs are ‘diluted’, as measurements are averaged over geographic areas and across an entire set of subscribers. Consequently, it is not clear where the root causes of problems are located and highly localised points of poor customer experience remain invisible.

“Many operators are outsourcing networks to Managed Service Providers and they risk losing control of the customer experience with outdated KPIs,” said Dr. Michael Flanagan, Chief Technology Officer at Arieso. “Both outsourced and ‘owned’ networks typically base indicators on network-centric KPIs. These often only address certain measures such as classic accessibility, retainability and availability metrics”

Arieso’s extensive discussions with operators globally have enabled it to identify three new and innovative location-aware KPIs, which bring a customer-centric focus to traditional indicators. These can also be employed in outsourced network agreements directly supporting efforts to manage and improve customer experience:

    KPI 1: Threshold numbers of 4G-capable customers served by 3G, and 3G customers served by 2G

    KPI 2: High Value customers whose “personal retainability” or “corporate retainability” is below a certain threshold

    KPI 3: High Value customers whose “personal data experience” or “corporate data experience” is below a certain threshold

Service Level Agreements at the centre of outsourcing deals intrinsically drive network-centric behaviour, rather than customer-centric behaviours. According to Dr. Flanagan “the global market for managed network services is forecast to grow significantly, it is therefore even more essential that mobile operators update their current KPIs to provide actionable measures allowing them to directly manage and improve the customer experience.”

Going forward KPIs must be specified in terms of real geographic locations that represent the true usage of the network, and personalised to the experiences of critical customers, rather than arbitrary groupings based on the network hierarchy. This will enable operators to accurately pinpoint specific issues and conditions with certain geographic boundaries, and real business impact. This will ultimately result in an enriched customer experience, reduced churn and efficiencies in performance engineering - reducing both CAPEX and OPEX.