Voice over Internet Protocol has huge growth prospects, but its immediate challenge is matching up to the high reliability of traditional telephony
Led by the North American cable companies (Multiple System Operators), telephony services using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology are beginning to hit the mass market. In a May 2004 research report, Juniper has said that VoIP will account for over 12 percent of all telephony revenues by 2009, an indication that its revenue potential for providers is growing along with consumer desire for the service.
However, to ensure that VoIP becomes viably competitive with traditional telephony services, it needs to stack up against the reliability that telephone users receive—they can count on their phone working for them 99.999 percent of the time. Service and support of the VoIP experience will directly influence the widespread adoption among consumers and decide whether providers can profitably provide the service.
With competitive pressures from carriers and satellite vendors, the MSOs have a significant revenue incentive to include telephony services as part of their strategy to lock-in customers with a ‘triple play’ offering of digital video, broadband data and telephony.
The MSOs are not alone, however. Knowing that their core access business is at stake, telcos are also building VoIP offerings—some more quickly than others, such as AT&T with CallVantage. Their strategy is to provide a broader approach that is more services-rich than what will be offered by the new entrants and MSOs.
New entrants such as Vonage are attempting to leverage the increasing growth of broadband Internet services by focussing on VoIP, not the enabling network.
The reason for all of these players to be aggressively pursuing this approach is that VoIP has proven to be a cost advantage, and can enable the introduction of new value-added telephony services.
However, critical to the long-term success of VoIP is not the introduction of a number of slick features or aggressive pricing, but the ability of the service provider to profitably manage the subscriber lifecycle. The VoIP provider will need to meet or exceed what has become the benchmark for voice telephony services—it is self-installed, auto-configured, and provides quality service at 99.999 percent reliability.
The challenge for providers is that supporting VoIP is fundamentally different from backing broadband Internet services or traditional circuit-switched voice services. There are numerous points of failures in a VoIP environment. From the home, through the network and soft-switch node, and ultimately to the fixed or mobile network endpoint, there are many places where call quality and feature availability can be impacted.
Is faulty home-wiring causing intermittent voice quality issues? Has a home network been set up incorrectly resulting in the defeat of Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms? Are some of the home telephony devices of poor quality or incompatible with the VoIP gateway? If the home isn’t the source of the problem, is it the network? Was a new router added and QoS set incorrectly? Has traffic growth on the network resulted in unacceptable delay, jitter or packet loss? Is there a provisioning error in the soft-switch impacting subscription services or voice-mail? Or has the subscriber blamed the VoIP service provider for a noisy destination phone?
The most challenging variable is the customer’s house. The cable companies have recognised this complexity and ensured that professional installers take care of switching the incumbent wire-line service to VoIP. Using professional installers enables cable companies to place the VoIP gateway out of reach, perform tests on the broadband connection, and reuse the home wiring after the telco service is disconnected. The telcos and new entrants such as CallVantage, Vonage and others provide do-it-yourself kits and rely on an existing broadband connection that they do not control. These new e ntrants are also looking at their long-term deployment strategies and may include a combination of professional and self-install options in the future.
Isolating common problems
Voice Connectivity
No dial tone
Fast busy
Unable to receive calls (straight to voice mail)
Unable to send/receive faxes
Call Features/Dialing
CFWD, 3-way calling, call waiting doesn’t work
Calling-line ID is not displayed
Reminder ring only
Unable to place international calls
Voice Mail
Unable to access voice mail
Voice mail indicator does not light (or reset)
Voice mail answers too quickly
Call Quality
Intermittent choppy voice
Continuous echo
Gaps in speech
Intermittent ticks & pops
‘Robotic’ sounding speech
Acquiring subscribers profitably
The critical first step in the customer experience is initial installation. In the case of a professional install, some of the variables in the home such as placement of the VoIP gateway, the home wiring set-up, and quality of the broadband connection can be controlled. What is harder to control however is the consistent application of best practices.
Contract installers hired to increase the number of company installers during a rush period may not be trained with the latest procedures, and even the best installers may sometimes cut corners to accelerate an install that is taking too long. In the case of self-installs, automating as much of the installation process as possible can reduce the risk of a service call. In a self-install business model, an on-premise service call in the case of a failed self-install can significantly delay the break-even point for a new subscriber.
No matter what approach is used, having the ability to validate the install quality from the network through to the VoIP gateway provides the best defence against quality slippage.
The disconnect between the QoS enforcement in the network vis-à-vis the home poses another challenge. Network operators are enabling QoS enforcement up to the de-marc point, typically the VoIP gateway in the home. QoS capabilities within a home network, however, are still being defined, and the standards bodies working on WAN- and LAN-side QoS are struggling to achieve end-to-end QoS capability. Providers need to educate the installer or subscriber on the impact of placing a VoIP gateway inside a home network without QoS controls in place.
In either case, professional or self-install, network-based features should be automatically provisioned and available. Ideally, a ‘service-ready’ test should be available to run at the end of the installation to ensure the services subscribed to are provisioned, billable and fully functional. It is better to address problems at the time of install than at the time of service usage—it’s less frustrating for the consumer and less costly for the provider.
Retaining subscribers
The key to avoiding truck-rolls is to develop a broad range of support services which reflect a comprehensive understanding of call drivers—the most common problems, root-causes, diagnostic options and solutions
After the install is complete—either by the professional installer or customer—it is up to a wide variety of self- and assisted-service support channels to retain the subscriber and keep him happy.
The ability of service providers to isolate problems in the home or in the network can be the deciding factor when making an expensive truck-roll decision.
The key to avoiding truck-rolls is to develop a broad range of support services which reflect a comprehensive understanding of call drivers—the most common problems, root-causes, diagnostic options and solutions (ideally automated solutions).
Tell Me, Show Me, Fix it
Armed with the most likely problems, the service-provider can build an environment that proactively solves an anticipated problem before it occurs (mass healing), self-healing, self-service and finally provides both call-centre agents and technicians a comprehensive view of the problem to speed resolution (assisted service). The approach described above from automatic diagnosis and resolution to automatic detection and prevention has been proven to lower costs and increase customer satisfaction.
In this context, here are some examples pertaining to VoIP.
Mass Healing. A new firmware load is available for the VoIP gateway that addresses a bug with a feature about to be launched. The VoIP gateways are automatically updated from the network prior to the feature being announced, resulting in a clean service launch.
Self-Healing. The ability of the VoIP gateway to protect and restore key settings, to detect and troubleshoot network congestion problems (that is, automatically adapting voice quality in the event of network congestion), or report back to network monitoring systems if leading indicators of quality problems are detected (such as latency nearing the threshold value).
Self-Service. The customer is able to access a knowledge-driven Web-based portal, IVR or speech-recognition system to get information on known outages, quality issues and frequently asked questions; activate/de-activate features; perform a voice-quality verification; or investigate billing issues.
Assisted Service. For call-centre agents it provides a wide variety of tools to quickly diagnose the problem and interact with the customer. Examples include knowledge systems, problem/resolution flows (decision trees), VoIP gateway and network diagnostics (distilled to simple green-light/red-light diagnostics), chat and e-mail. For the service technician, there would be a complete view of the problem including a snapshot of key VoIP gateway and network characteristics at the point of failure—before he arrives at the house.
Growing subscribers with new services
Putting in place a positive service and support process experience leads to numerous up-sell opportunities. A Web-based self-service portal for customer support and feature usage is an ideal place to offer new services. Interactive chat can be used to help customers understand the benefits of new features and enhance the ordering process. In the event of an assisted-service session, a succes sful problem resolution is a natural opportunity to engage in up-selling or cross-selling.
Summary
The success of VoIP services over the long-term will be defined by the ability to acquire subscribers’ profitability by getting the installation right the first time; retaining subscribers through an integrated, multi-channel support strategy; and growing a quality support experience into new service opportunities.
In a telephony world accustomed to 99.999 reliability, the importance of high quality service and support cannot be overlooked—it must be built into the offerings at the beginning.
The author is Vice-president Engineering & Services SupportSoft.
He can be reached at ashok.waran@supportsoft.com