Telecom Industry Report

TELECOM INDUSTRY REPORTWhat Social Customers Can Tell Service Providers and Device Manufacturers About Their Business

© Attensity 2011. All rights reserved.

TELECOM INDUSTRY REPORT

Contents

Overview 3

Telecom Key Business Drivers 3

Buzz Analytics 4

Social Media Awareness for Telecom Carriers 4

The Buzz Report Summary 4

Customer Sentiment 5

Carrier Sentiment Overtime 5

Product Quality and Customer Service Issues 6

Telecom Hardware Manufacturer Product Quality Issues 6

Safety Issues Pareto 7

Customer Service Issues Report 7

Churn Analytics 8

Tracking Churn In Social Media 8

Articulation Variance Report 9

Churn Word Cloud 9

New Product Launch Monitoring 10

New Product Launch Buzz – The RIM Playbook 10

Marketing Campaign Tracking 11

Marketing Campaign Awareness Report 11

Competitive Analysis 12

Survey Analytics 13

Survey Scores by Sentiment and Issues Report 13

Product Innovation 13

Captured Product Suggestions 14

Customer Behavior and Preference Profiles 14

Customer Demographics 14

Reasons for Purchase Report 14

Customer Engagement Response Queues 15

Example Social Queues Tracking Attrition 16

Summary

ATTENSITY TELECOM INDUSTRY REPORT | PAGE 3


OverviewTelecom service providers and mobile device manufacturers recognize that their customers are both

passionate and vocal about their products and services. Whether those customers are anticipating the

release of the newest smartphone, downloading the latest apps or comparing coverage in their service

areas, they are sharing their experiences in conversations every day. These conversations take place

both directly with the company through emails, phone calls and surveys, or indirectly online as

customers share their opinions on review sites, blog about their experiences or solicit recommendations

from friends on social networks.

In the past, when these conversations were limited to direct interactions with the company, the

company could deal with it in its own timeframe, directly and one on one with the customer. Response

times could be anywhere from minutes to days, depending on the question or issue. Today, a major shift

is occurring in the way customers interact with their service and device providers. Driven by the

widespread adoption of mobile devices and social media, customer conversations are multiplying, they

are often shared publicly, and they can quickly go viral.

Buried in these millions of offline and online conversations is a wealth of customer intelligence that can

provide critical insights into key telecom business drivers. Until recently, however, providers were

limited to analyzing only structured data contained within their business systems—things like customer

names, contact information, device data, and so forth. Now, recent advances in text analytics have

made it possible for companies to analyze unstructured text from these customer conversations

captured in call center notes, emails and surveys, and even in online sources such as blogs, review sites

and social media.

Customer conversations contain a wealth of actionable business data.

Using advanced text analytics technology, leading service providers and device manufacturers are

mining customer conversations for business intelligence not captured in their structured business

systems. They are capturing actionable data such as customer sentiment, product quality or service

issues, reasons for churn, competitive data and more. And using the results of that analysis, they are

engaging proactively with customers across multiple channels, including email, web, call center and in

social media.


Overview of social media coverage of top telecom carriers.

Attensity, a leading provider of text analytics solutions for customer experience management, is at the

forefront of this trend. In a recent analysis of social media, Attensity captured a snapshot of this

customer intelligence from publicly available online sources, including social media. The data was from

the first quarter of 2011 and focused on North American telecommunications carriers and device

manufacturers. The following report provides an overview of the types of customer intelligence and

key business drivers that telecom carriers and hardware providers can access using advanced text

analytics.

Buzz AnalyticsIf you are selling telecommunications devices or services, your brand and products are being discussed

online every day. In an analysis lasting approximately 60 days, thousands of posts were discovered

mentioning the major and minor telecommunications carriers and device providers in North America.

These posts included customer sentiment about new products, opinions of offerings, customer service

complaints and more. The first set of reports show the sheer volume of discussions about these

leading companies and their competitors:


Utilizing a buzz monitoring report like the one on the previous page, providers can get a real-time

snapshot of the volume of coverage by any variable they specify, including brand name, product name,

campaign name and more. For example, the above report shows the number of comments by company

name, as well as the impact and engagement assessment of the buzz about the brand. The report also

includes comparative views, share of coverage, buzz velocity (has the buzz gone up or down during a

period of time?), location of the buzz and more.

In this report, Verizon had the most buzz with over 111,000 mentions in just 30 days. Note that this data

represents a specific slice of time and will change depending on the market forces at work. For example,

this data snapshot was taken during Verizon’s launch of the iPhone4, which created a significant spike in

the buzz about the Verizon brand. That may seem an obvious conclusion. A better question might be:

what specifically are these customers talking about?

Understanding Customer SentimentDo your customers like you? Do they prefer your competition? Are your marketing messages

resonating? If so, why? If not, what are their issues? Sentiment analysis helps organizations understand

what customers think about their brand and products. The ability to track customer sentiment gives

device and service providers the insight they need to determine where and how to prioritize change.

This report shows customer sentiment by carrier, and a snapshot of sentiment over time.

Discovering the “Why” Behind Customer CommentsKnowing whether customers feel positively or negatively about their brand, products or services gives

telecom companies a high-level view of the health of the business. But what are the issues that are

driving that sentiment? These are the key details service providers and device manufacturers need to

know to make needed changes and drive their business forward.


Some of the most impactful insights that organizations can get from analyzing online customer

conversations is an early view into product quality and customer service issues. Research shows that

over 50% of online mentions of companies and their products are related to product and service issues.

The ability to understand the impact of quality issues and get early warning of those issues is a

significant area of opportunity to save costs and improve the customer experience.

Today’s empowered customers

often turn to the Internet when

they encounter a problem with a

product or service. By tracking

issues over time, providers can get

a sense of both emerging issues

and issues that have gone from a

“normal” level of complaint to a

serious level. Armed with this

knowledge, the manufacturer or

provider can take action to

prevent a minor issue from

spiraling into a customer service

or public relations disaster. This

might mean augmenting its

service team, or providing FAQs

and fix-it information on the

company’s support web site to

deflect calls and make the

information easily accessible to

customers.

Learning about these issues early and tracking them over time to improve customer service, and

ultimately, products, can result in significant cost savings, but because the detail about these issues

is usually hidden in textual feedback, understanding what the issues are and their magnitude can be

challenging.

Using advanced analytics, hardware manufacturers can identify specific product quality issues. For

example, the above report shows a summary of the top issues identified by customers in social

media regarding handset quality issues. First shown are the overall general negative issues

discussed about the handset. Second to these general complaints are issues with the battery life,

which represents one of the top complaints across brands including the iPhone, the HTC, the

Blackberry Storm and others. Other issues include small button keys, the camera not working and

issues with the screen display.

Device manufacturers can use customer analytics to track quality issues over time.


In some cases, the manufacturer might even identify issues that could pose a safety threat. The pareto

analysis below shows how manufacturers can use customer analytics to track a product quality issue

over time, this example show the progression of a potentially dangerous issue around a new device

that “gets hot” during use. The analysis chart tracks the issue and the frequency with which the issue

was mentioned over time.

In the same way, providers and handset manufacturers can discover and track issues and hot spots to

show the change in those issues over time and track their impact on sentiment and satisfaction. This

gives the manufacturer the opportunity to take action, before the problem becomes serious. This

feedback can be mined in real time from social media and other online sources, as well as from the

company’s own internal sources like surveys, emails and call center notes. The second chart below

shows an issue tracked overtime and its impact on sentiment by carrier.

Device manufacturers can use customer analytics to track quality issues over time.

Carriers can identify the specific customer service issues affecting customer sentiment.


Detecting Intent to ChurnUnderstanding and then managing subscriber churn before it happens is critical to the success of any

telecom service provider. Telecommunications regulations have made it easier than ever before to

switch carriers, and the frequent introduction of new faster and more feature-packed devices,

combined with compelling incentives, are encouraging subscribers to switch more frequently. Churn

happens in both directions, both to and away from the provider. The ability to identify which

customers are getting ready to make a switch, understand why, catch them in the process and

connect with them to provide offers to mitigate the change or to encourage a move to your service

provides both opportunities to win new customers and retain existing customers, driving new

revenues and preserving existing relationships.

The customer churn report here shows publicly available data drawn from social media sources of

conversations around intent to churn between two leading service providers. These conversations are

taking place every day online, yet carriers often lack the tools to monitor, analyze and act on them. With

advanced text analytics solutions, providers can not only identify and prevent churn, they can spot

opportunities to win new business from customers frustrated with the competition’s products or

services.

Customer conversations that mention intent to churn between two leading service providers.


The most challenging part of getting to insight in large volumes of customer conversation data is the

great variances in the way people say things. Using advanced text analytics solutions, companies can

now automatically aggregate mentions of churn that are articulated in different ways into a single

category. In the sample report shown here, churn articulation includes comments such as:

“I am going to switch.”

“I am going to move carriers.”

“I am going to jump carriers.”

The software automatically identifies

these different variations as relating to

churn and aggregates them into a

single churn category which can then

be analyzed and routed to agents for

action.

Automatically Discover Topics of ConversationTelecom carriers and device manu-

facturers are increasingly aware that

customer conversations are taking

place online in social media, on blogs

and review sites, in customer forums,

etc. Many are taking strides to monitor

and search for topics of conversation

they know are of interest.

Advanced text analytics technologies capture the various ways customer express opinion.

But what about those issues they haven’t identified yet? While traditional search and text analytics

systems rely on building exhaustive keyword lists, newer advanced analytics technology gives providers

the ability to automatically discover topics of conversation as they are happening. When product issues

and service missteps can quickly go viral, the ability to get early warning of issues and spot trends is fast

becoming a key competitive differentiator.

Word clouds give telecom operators an easy way to see

which customer topics are trending at a glance. The larger

words show the topics with the most number of

comments. Easy to use reports and dashboards like this are

an essential component of customer analytics systems, and

give marketers and customer service organizations an easy

way to monitor customer conversations and spot key

trends.


Monitoring the Success of a New Product LaunchIn the telecom industry, new product and service introductions are expensive, requiring the

coordination of multiple front end and back end systems, product development cycles, capital

investment, marketing campaign development, and training for contact center agents, to name just

a few factors. Leveraging customer data throughout these processes is critical to success, but most

providers have to wade through long research cycles that include panels, focus groups and surveys.

Even then, success is anything but certain.

Using advanced text analytics, providers and manufacturers can now get fast feedback on new

product introductions directly from the market, and use that intelligence to adjust their launch

strategies to the realities of the market. Near real time feedback can help the provider course

correct, making changes to aspects of the product and offering that can make the critical difference

between a product launch that falls flat and one that is a major hit. Understanding customer

opinion early in the process gives providers the insight they need to anticipate demand and even

make changes to inventory and campaigns based on customer feedback. Included here are just a

few examples of the kinds of analysis providers and manufacturers can conduct around new product

introductions.

Marketers can use advanced customer analytics to monitor the success of new product launches.

Understanding customer opinion early in the process gives providers the insight they need to anticipate demand, and even make changes to

inventory and campaigns based on customer feedback.

Understanding the Impact of Marketing CampaignsTelecom service providers and device manufacturers spend millions to market their products and

services, and to drive traffic to their web sites and into their stores. Other than waiting for the sales

reports, how can they tell if it is working? Surveys and other market research methods only tell half

the story. The detailed feedback found in social media from customer opinions and ideas around a new

marketing campaign can be striking—and providers can use this feedback to mold future campaigns or

second and third waves of an existing campaign.


The detailed feedback from customer opinions and ideas around a new marketing campaign can be striking.

By monitoring customer conversations, marketers can use feedback to fine-tune campaigns.

For example, the report shown on the prior page shows customer conversations around Verizon’s

“Rule the Air” campaign, including share of coverage in different media such as blogs, forums, online

news and video sites. Marketers can use this information to better plan and fine tune campaigns, and

direct their marketing efforts and dollars to the channels that offer the best return on their

investment.

Analyzing the Competition Before the advent of advanced text analytics, competitive analysis was typically carried out by

consultants paid to pick around in the competitor’s garbage can, website or stores. Or they might

send out a survey to their customers to find out more about their pricing, marketing, products and

customer opinion. While those tactics can produce some very interesting insights, leveraging social

media to get a real view into what the market thinks presents an enormous opportunity.

Competitive churn analysis among the top carriers.


Telecom carriers and manufacturers can measure churn rates and many other variables versus their competitors to get a real-time view into what the market thinks of their products and services. They can even drill down into the details

to get a deep understanding of the competition.


Survey AnalyticsSurveys are an important tool that many device and service providers use to track customer

feedback over time. Using survey metrics like customer satisfaction or Net Promoter scores enables

the business to track changes in customer satisfaction over time. Along with survey questions, it is

critical to also provide detail behind the scores. Why does in-store service continually score lower

than average? Why are some customers not inclined to recommend a particular handset?

Product InnovationThe development of new product ideas has always been something of a black art. The typical

approach is to get your most creative product engineers and ideators involved in a project, add a little

bit of market research and creative juice, and out comes a product! While having excellent product

innovators is critical to any company’s success, the opportunity to tap customer conversations for

suggestions, ideas for new products and product changes can provide valuable insights into what to

build and what not to build next. Along with traditional market research, customers are ideating

every day online.

Using survey metrics like customer satisfaction or Net Promoter scores enables the business to track changes in customer satisfaction over time and to understand the “why” behind the score.

Net Promoter scores enable the business to track changes in customer satisfaction over time.


Customer Behavior and Preference ProfilesThe verbatim of customer conversations about specific products and services can be quite revealing in

terms of the detail customers provide about themselves, the reasons they buy, who they buy for and

more. While demographic and behavioral data is telling, customer conversations often deliver a degree

of granularity that can be used to better segment and market to customers.

Telecom leaders are using advanced customer analytics to profile customer behavior and preferences.

Mining conversations for suggestions can provide a valuable tool for product development.


Customer Engagement Response QueuesWhile analyzing customer conversations is critical, it is just the first step. The ability to drive action

based on these insights based on established business processes is critical to success in today’s

competitive telecommunications market. Many companies are struggling with how to engage with

their customers in social media. It can be a daunting challenge, yet for today’s hyper-connected

customers, the ability to engage through social media is quickly moving from a novelty to an

expected piece of the customer experience.

Companies that don’t actively engage with customers through these channels will soon find

themselves at a disadvantage. Using customer analytics to drive proactive response is a key

capability telecom providers need to turn insight into action. Today’s advanced customer analytics

and engagement platforms allow providers to transform customer conversations into action.

By routing customer conversations into different queues from any channel, including social media, different stakeholders throughout the enterprise can engage customers proactively, while the system

tracks interaction history.

The ability to engage through social media is quickly moving from a novelty to an expected piece of the customer experience

SummaryThere is a wealth of user-generated content in social media, email, CRM notes, surveys and more being

created every day about your company, your products, and your competition. Too often, this vital

information goes underutilized and virtually untapped as a valuable asset.

However, through the power of today’s advanced text analytics solutions, telecom providers and device

manufacturers can now conduct deep analytics and use those insights to drive key business decisions,

deliver proactive service, and formulate competitive business strategies.

The key to unlocking this wealth of information lies in a deep understanding of language—the ability to

accurately pull out sentiment, key issues, and relationships—and in the ability to express those insights

in easy-to-use business oriented applications. This report is just a small glimpse into the kind of analytics

and engagement capabilities that telecom businesses can achieve.

For more information about the information contained in this report, Attensity’s text analytics solutions

or to get a private demonstration, please contact [email protected], or visit us online:

Website: www.attensity.com

Blog: http://blog.attensity.com/

Twitter: twitter.com/Attensity

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/attensity

About Attensity

Attensity helps the world’s leading brands leverage customer conversations as a business asset. Using Attensity’s

integrated suite of customer analytics and response applications, organizations can tap the wealth of data stored

in both internal and online sources, and use that information to improve the customer experience with their

brands. Attensity’s award-winning Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions are built on a massively

scalable text analytics platform that enables organizations to listen, analyze, relate and act on customer

conversations, no matter where they take place. From its headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., and Kaiserslautern,

Germany, Attensity is powering the customer experience strategies of companies such as Charles Schwab,

Citigroup, HP, JetBlue, Lloyd’s Banking Group, Siemens, Starwood Resorts, Travelocity and Whirlpool.

©2011 Attensity. All rights reserved. Attensity, First Person Intelligence and Exhaustive Extraction are trademarks

of Attensity Group in the United States and/or other countries. Other brand and product names are trademarks or

registered trademarks of their respective holders. Information is subject to change without notice.


mailto:[email protected]



http://www.attensity.com/

http://blog.attensity.com/

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