and demands, operators often fail to translate this market intelligence into tangible results. The fragmentation of customer data across multiple disparate systems greatly inhibits providers’ ability to assemble a single, complete and accurate view of the subscriber, rendering it virtually impossible to understand their preferences, analyze their behaviors or recommend relevant offers.

“Carriers have unique profile information about their subscribers—they have data including what kind of phone they use, where they live and whether they’re a mobile broadband subscriber, yet none of that information is being used,” says Oracle senior director of product marketing Ty Wang. “The fundamental problem facing service providers is that they don’t have a consolidated, single view of their customers. From customer relations management to billing to network information to ordering, there’s no unified view. They don’t know how to do that.”

But Oracle does know how to do that. It is the worldwide market leader in customer care applications, with an extensive solution portfolio that offers providers new insight into their subscribers’ preferences and behaviors to boost consumer satisfaction and loyalty and maximize the value of each customer.

“We give smart companies a much clearer picture to identify which customers to target, which ones not to target, and potentially which ones to let churn if they’re not profitable,” says Oracle director of business development and marketing Arturo Pereyra. “We can examine usage patterns to see which services are doing well, and we can help move R&D to reflect which services are being adopted in the marketplace while adjusting in real-time to marketing dynamics like promotions and pricing. If there’s great usage on a plan that’s popular, carriers increase their fact-based decision making capabilities to maximize profits like increasing the price and/or decreasing promotion spend, as an example. Our BSS applications make all those kinds of decisions much clearer and more accurate.”

 

DESPITE—OR, PERHAPS, BECAUSE OF—the economic downturn, consumer insistence on positive customer

service experiences is on the rise. A recent study conducted by market research firm Harris Interactive reports that 87 percent of U.S. consumers have stopped doing business with an organization following a negative customer experience, up from 80 percent in 2007 and 68 percent in 2006. The report also found that 58 percent of U.S. consumers said that even in a down economy, they will always or often pay more for a better customer experience. Another 58 percent maintain that outstanding consumer service is more important than low prices (44 percent) and top-quality products/ser-vices (43 percent) when recommending a company. 

“In our studies we’re finding more and more that one of the biggest differentiators is customer care,” says Vince Vittore, principal analyst in Yankee Group’s Anywhere Network research group. “It doesn’t contribute directly to the bottom line, but operators that don’t emphasize customer care are in significant danger.”

But customer care is just one facet of overall consumer satisfaction. Performance and reliability, cost of service, billing, and offerings and promotions all play vital roles as well. Consider the results of J.D. Power and Associates’ 2008 Residential Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study: When examining the impact of bundled voice and data services, the study found that