Subscribers' quality of experience: bridging the gap between perception and reality

Measured quality of service vs. actual quality

Indeed, there is a significant gap between the measured quality of any particular network service and the actual quality as perceived by subscribers. The quality of customer experience is a key factor to satisfy subscribers. It is also one of the most important considerations for customers when choosing their operator. Given that 40% of unsatisfied customers are likely to switch service provider, it is clearly time to invest in an innovative tool that enables mobile operators to see their network as their customers see it.

Many mobile network operators monitor the quality of their services by gathering data from various technical sources such as CDRs, network probes and drive testing tools, but this approach fails to provide a truly complete picture of the end-user experience.

Providing immediate access

Customers want a smooth experience when accessing and using their favourite mobile services and apps and this on any device, anytime and wherever they happen to be. To meet this high expectation, telecom operators need to not only improve network service quality but to understand their customers' perceived service quality and to instantly solve issues.

Stuart Miles via freedigitalphotos.net

With the quality of experience agents and customer experience analytics platforms, mobile operators have a solution that collects subscriber insights. Nowadays, 85% of customers calling the customer service centre want the agent to have immediate access to information about the status of their network connection and any problems they are having. Those platforms offer a powerful reporting and analysis tool with a comprehensive set of reports. It provides network, device, system, traffic, call events, mapping and other views and modules to help various departments in conducting a proactive quality analysis to quickly understand the situation and take actions to close the gap between perception and reality and enhance subscribers' experience.

As mobile operators get ready to offer new 4G services, they are under pressure to deliver the best mobile network quality to their end-users, keeping them satisfied while data consumption and mobile internet usage are saturating network capacities. In this context, service quality and reliability will more than ever be a main competitive advantage.