The Back Office Becomes the Customer Experience

The consumer experience is changing as a result of online models of interaction. As cable operators continue to become purveyors of multimedia, multiplatform services, they need to upgrade their back office to accommodate this expectation, said Craig Bachmann, director of cable, utility and eHealthcare programs for the TM Forum.In other words, with Amazon's services, when a customer orders, there is no division between the front and back office. The experience is managed all in one place. The same has to be true with cable - the back office must become the new front line, Bachmann said."I just saw interviews with Tony Werner, who said, 'I see the future, and it is software, software, software.' Clearly it's a new thing, managing the customer experience and operations (together)," Bachmann said.The back office also needs to be able to handle the quick rollout of new services, variables like customer-owned CPE and customer support for each new launch. At the same time, the operator must make changes to its back office processes and procedures with as little impact to the customer as possible. "You can't shut down the old and start up the new by flipping a switch," Bachmann said.The TM Forum has a set of best practices intended to ease the transition to a brave new back office world. The idea is that by using a common model, operators will gain a method for productively rolling out services without having to move mountains each time to gain the necessary back office support. Additionally, it will allow vendors to have a consistent approach across MSOs, Bachmann said.One of the key components to the TM Forum best practices is the concept of mapping. By mapping systems, people, processes, services and desired functionality against the model, an operator can identify where it has gaps and where integration is necessary, for example.The mapping can be used to keep track of how the company operates and what is interdependent. If one system is changed, the operator can see what effect this will have on customer touchpoints as well as well as internal processes, Bachmann said.Cablevision Argentina recently underwent this transformation to its back office suite and mapped 45 processes and more than 500 activities as part of its model. The company identified 3,000 functionalities and 100 integration services to be put in place over the next three to four years. The development of the BSS/OSS suite took 210,000 hours over 15 months."The idea is the model helps keep track of this on a discrete basis by process," Bachmann said. "You are not doing a gigantic, 'Gee, I've got to change everything in 15 months.' You do little pieces at a time and keep track of the impact to the organization."Modeling also enables a company to devise test cases to make sure everything works before a change occurs. Cablevision Argentina used 16,000 test cases. "They also wound up training 9,000 employees on the new system and maintained a customer satisfaction rating of 88%," Bachmann said. "They also proved this is a way to get from here to there for all the MSOs facing this."Monta Monaco Hernon is a free-lance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].