There are only two categories of role in an organisation - you either serve the customer or you serve someone else who does (i.e. you serve internal team members who serve customers).
The same is true of OSS and BSS system. They tick both boxes in terms of the roles they support.
Roles of OSS and BSS
BSS tend to focus on supporting the business side of operations, such as customer management, billing, and revenue management. Clearly these are the systems designed to support roles that directly serve the customer.
OSS typically focuses on supporting the technical operations of a business, such as network management, service provisioning, and performance monitoring. These tools are more indirect or back-office in nature, providing assistance to the people and BSS tools that serve the customers.
How OSS and BSS influence the customer experience?
Whether directly or indirectly, OSS and BSS combine to influence the customer experience in many ways.
For example, OSS can help to ensure that a company's technical infrastructure is reliable and efficient, ensuring customers are delighted with their service provider’s offerings. However, OSS also share information with BSS that help customer-facing employees with the information they need to provide accurate and timely responses when customer inquiries and requests arise.
Unlike some other industries though, most customers don’t want to engage with the network operator’s staff across a majority of their service lifecycle. They just want to use the service with no impediments and no direct engagement with the operator. They only want to interact with the network operator staff for certain events during their entire customer lifecycle.
These events could include positive events such as new orders, moves, changes, or negative events such as reporting of service degradations, churn to another network and service cancellations. Whether positive or negative events, customers want these interactions to be smooth, fast and efficient.
Ideal customer experience and how to achieve it?
To be smooth, fast and efficient, the operator’s OSS, BSS (and interactions between the two) also need to be smooth, fast and efficient. In fact, OSS and BSS are arguably the primary determinant in achieving an ideal customer experience.
Achieving this is much harder than customers realise. There are many moving parts that make up the OSS, BSS and especially the interactions between them. Automations and integrations are a primary focus to handle end-to-end activities reliably and repeatably. They’re pivotal to allow the operator to handle customer inquiries and provide quick, accurate responses. They’re essential for coordinating resources so that actions are resolved as optimally as possible. They’re also fundamental to improve communication and collaboration within the organisation, making it easier for employees to work together and provide better service to customers.
However, automations and integrations can be extremely challenging and resource-hungry to get right. Even the smallest of friction points can lead to customer experiences being anything but smooth, fast and efficient. Having an OSS and BSS stack that comes pre-integrated from top to bottom like SunVizion is a definite advantage because their integrations have already been used and refined across many network operators and their multitude of scenarios.
Additionally, technology can be used to gather and analyse customer data, allowing operators to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviours. This allows operators to tailor their products and services to better meet customer needs. Ideally, this analysis and refinement happens behind the scenes without having to interrupt the customer (and without disseminating private or privileged information).
Indirect and direct-to-customer roles supported by one tool
Having indirect and direct-to-customer roles all supported and combined within a single data set provides operators with another distinct advantage. Rather than having to carefully sew data together from disparate systems, it’s already a coherent set from which to derive advanced customer experience insights and improvements.
When combined, OSS and BSS solutions like SunVizion provide a platform that significantly helps to serve the customer, whether your role or your system is directly or indirectly responsible.
