An article by Harvard Business Review (HBR) indicates that, “Resilience was defined by most as the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity.” That reduces frustration and improves customer satisfaction, which can ultimately lead to increased loyalty and retention, reduce frustration and improve customer satisfaction, which can ultimately lead to increased loyalty and retention.
OSS and BSS as a telco’s resilience insurance policy
However, of greater interest, a survey discussed in the same HBR article found that when respondents were asked, “what was happening in their own lives that required them to draw on those reserves, they didn’t point to tragedies like the London Tube bombings, appalling business mistakes, the need to keep up with the inexorably accelerating pace of change, or the challenges of the still-difficult economy — they pointed to their co-workers. A whopping 75% of them said that the biggest drain on their resilience reserves was “managing difficult people or office politics at work.” That was followed closely by stress brought on by overwork and by having to withstand personal criticism.”
Working with many people in the telecoms industry, we can certainly relate these findings to our own experiences. OSS and BSS solutions are a telco’s ultimate resilience insurance policy. They allow recovery from setbacks, facilitate an endless stream of changes and need to keep the network and customer services running no matter what happens, no matter what adversities strike.
The Benefits of OSS and BSS for Telecommunications Companies: Improved Resilience and Customer Service
OSS and BSS enable telcos to better manage and respond to the many different types of setback, outage or disruption that might strike.
Some are predictable. We know the electronics in network devices will fail from time to time. We know that cables will be cut by accidental damage. We know that markets will change and trends will evolve.
Others are infrequent to the point of being unpredictable. That might be a cascading outage where a series of events aligned in a perfect storm to bring down a network. It might be changes in regulatory policies or customer expectations. It might even be a virus that changes the way the world interacts with comms networks globally.
In any of these cases, the OSS systems must quickly identify the root-cause of the problem, whether predictable or unpredictable, and establish a plan for rapid resolution. The OSS tool is relied upon to keep downtime to an absolute minimum, prevent disruptions from spreading and then prevent similar disturbances from happening in the future.
BSS solutions also have a part to play. They provide the important customer interface to what’s occurring in the network. They help by providing customer notifications and supporting customer enquiry hotlines. They help serve customers with accurate and timely information. In often stressful situations, BSS can help to reduce frustration and improve customer satisfaction, which can ultimately lead to increased loyalty and retention.
The human face of telco resilience
These factors mostly relate to the technical face of resilience. We also need to consider the human face of resilience – the second quote about internal politics, overwork and personal criticism. As the saying goes, “When employees feel valued and appreciated, they are more motivated to deliver excellent customer service.”
We believe that OSS and BSS have an important, and perhaps overlooked, part to play in the human face of telco resilience.
Internal politics is unlikely to be completely overcome, but OSS and BSS can be set up to enhance collaboration, separate and integrate different business units or both. Well configured OSS and BSS can heavily automate worker activities, especially high-volume or mundane tasks, allowing your team to focus on fewer but more important activities that humans are best placed to perform. Similarly, personal criticism often arises when things aren’t running smoothly, such as order fall-outs, network / service incidents, customer complaints and delays or discrepancies in general.
A well-oiled OSS / BSS can help an entire organization to run more smoothly, from both a technical and human perspective. It’s never going to be the panacea for all the problems cited in the HBR article, but a well integrated and performing OSS / BSS certainly can reduce the stress levels.
