A new telecom analyst and the process of forcasting

I just finished up my first major report since joining Analysys Mason, it's description is located at http://www.analysysmason.com/Research/Programmes/Telecoms-software/Service-Fulfilment/ . It is almost 50 pages of text, diagrams, and charts that show my projections of the market for systems in the Order Management, Inventory, Activation, and Engineering Tools markets.

It was a fascinating experience to make such projections, and to gather information about the current sales and strategies of the various vendors. Most of the public company vendors are too large to report at the detail that I needed while the small companies are private, and often do not report any financials. So how do we do it? A number of vendors give us reasonable access to data on their sales at a remarkable level of granularity - all under tight non-disclosure, of course. These data serve us well as we try to put together the puzzle of the market size, along with estimates of revenue we can make ourselves, sometimes just from the number of employees of a company! It's actually rather scientific, but with a fair amount of windage - that's why industry analysts tend to be people who have been around an industry for a long time.

Customer Self-Care Done Right!

On the second day of the TelesStrategies conference on Customer Self-Care and Customer Experience Management was a wonderful talk by cBeyond. They are a VoIP and It provider to SMBs in selected cities in the US. They REALLY provide self-care! User interfaces to allow the customers to do almost anything themselves. But what really set cBeyond apart was its approach to training their customers to use the self-care facilities. The first month after a customer signs up for service, they send out a CSR to the customer premises to train the customer on how to use the self-care interface! Then they give their CSRs a method of remotely controlling a computer on the customers' premises so that they can see what the customer is doing and help them - or even do it for them! Bravo cBeyond!

Customer Self-Care - "You're on Your Own" or "You Asked for It!"?

This week I'm at the TeleStrategies conference on Customer Self-Care and Customer Experience Management. There have been a lot of good talks, mostly from the carriers. I picked up some good date - peak of self-care use is in the 28 year old crowd, dropping off fast with age after that - self-care users are 14% less likely to churn - only about 13% of self-care users are web, with IVR much more - when a customer has a good experience, they tell, on average, 3.5 people. If they have a bad experience, they tell 7! - electronic bill presentment is about as important to medium to large businesses as on-line service ordering is. But what is really striking is the attitude of many of the carriers. While companies such as Allstate, Zappos, Netflix and others talk about how to enhance the customer experience through self-care and good CEM, many (but certainly not all) of the carriers use words more about how to move customers to self-care because it is cheaper. One speaker for a major mobile carrier was actually brave enough to describe an abortive program where they charged their low-end prepaid customers $2 to call a CSR! That didn't last long - it immediately increased their defection rate! Maybe more good stuff today.

Mortensen's Law of Maximum Ambiguity

I'm taking a break from writing a large report for Analysys Mason: "Service Fulfillment Market 2008 to 2013." So I thought I would share something I've quoted occasionally to my friends - a "law" of nature that has some remarkable predictive abilities. I've somewhat immodestly named it "Mortensen's Law of Maximum Ambiguity " (been searching for a pithier name - any ideas?).

MORTENSEN'S LAW OF MAXIMUM AMBIGUITY
In any situation, what will happen next is whatever will leave you maximally confused as to what the best course of action is.

Simple example:
You know that if "A" happens, you know you should do "Z." If "B" happens, then "Y."
What will happen will be a strange admixture of "A," "B," and "C" (maybe something you did not even think of) in precisely the combination that leaves you the most confused as to what is best to do next.

Try this out and see if you agree - many have reported that its predictive powers are amazing!