QoE Management: Telecom Services and the Transition to an Experience Economy

The move from service economy to experience economy is a trend evidenced by Apple’s “customer experience first” philosophy. As operators speed up deployment of 3G and 4G networks and reduce data tariffs, customers are experiencing higher mobile Internet speeds and are trying out new services and applications. They are increasingly turning towards interactive services and applications and are highly aware of service experience. Telecom services have entered a post-3G/4G era called the experience economy. As operators migrate towards full service operation, market competition is becoming fiercer. Operators who build quality networks, meet user needs, and offer more innovative services will survive the competition. Quality of experience (QoE) is therefore key to successful telecom services. Surviving and being profitable means managing QoE, attracting and retaining customers, improving user satisfaction and expanding the subscriber base. The challenge operators face today is how to monitor and improve QoS in real time and offer custom-made differentiated services. Customer experience management (CEM) is essential.

CEM: A New Trend in Network OAM

High network KPIs do not necessarily mean good QoE

Conventionally, a vertical chimney-style management structure is used for network operation and maintenance (OAM). A dedicated network, such as a radio access network (RAN), core network (CN) or bearer network, has its own proprietary element management system (EMS) to ensure network availability and QoS. Can conventional network-oriented OAM tackle the challenges operators now face? Do good network KPIs mean good QoE? The answer is no. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. show examples of high network KPI and poor QoE.

         Figure 1. KPIs for dedicated networks

In Fig. 1, KPIs for CN, RAN, and IP bearer networks are very high. This means the network quality is excellent; however, call quality is still low. It may be that calls are dropping in an abnormal cell. Customers in this cell may be experiencing very bad service, but this low-quality cell is covered by other cells with high KPIs (Fig. 2). Therefore, network KPIs do not necessarily reflect end-to-end QoS and should not be the sole basis for enhancing QoS.

 Figure 2. Actual end-user QoE.

The transition from network-centered to customer-centered OAM

With customer-centered OAM, greater importance is attached to customer QoE. All OAM resources are centered on improving customer experience. QoE management is gradually being considered the core of network OAM. Good network OAM has traditionally meant smooth network operation; now it is being thought of in terms of good customer experience. The core value of network OAM is in real-time monitoring of QoE, evaluating operator QoS, and taking measures to quickly repair faults and recover services.

Table 1. The difference between customer oriented and traditional network oriented OAM.

Customer experience management (CEM) is customer- and service-oriented network OAM. Service experience management is differentiated according to different customers and services and is an effective tool for operators to optimize their network operation.

End-to-End CEMC

ZTE has launched an end-to-end customer experience management center (CEMC) that helps operators bridge the gaps between networks, services, and customers. Network OAM is optimized by monitoring and managing QoE and QoS.

CEMC comprises service quality management (SQM) and CEM. SQM belongs to QoS management and is used to manage quality of service and provides quality indices that can be used to monitor the end-to-end quality of different services. CEM belongs to QoE management and is used to measure QoE from the customer’s perspective. By analyzing customer concerns, a QoE index system can be established that is as close as possible to the customer’s actual experience. CEM is used to manage customer QoE.

End-to-end QoE assessment

After many years of research on QoE, ZTE has proposed an end-to-end QoE assessment system that consists of indices for customer, service, and network (Fig. 3). These are used to measure and assess customer QoE.

  Figure 3. End-to-end QoE assessment system.

The top layer is customer experience indicator (CEI). This provides an objective measurement of customer experience. The CEI is used to describe customer service experience.

The second layer is key quality indicator (KQI). This indicates the performance of products and services. The KQI can be calculated using different KPIs. It is subdivided into product KQI and service KQI. 

The third layer is network-based KPI. This represents a certain part of end-to-end service data. The KPI is important for assessing network OAM. It is also the data basis for the CEI and KQI. KPIs are based on alarm, performance, and network configuration data; analysis data from active/passive probing and packet capturing, and billing data.

Complete OAM functions

Network OAM involves discovering, locating, and solving problems. These three aspects are closely interconnected to form a complete network OAM system (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Core functions of CEMC.

• Discovering problems involves finding an appropriate “thermometer” to determine the real-time customer QoE.
• Locating problems means identifying possible cause of problems when abnormalities are detected.
• Solving problems means remedying the symptoms.

CEMC provides complete OAM functions that help operators improve QoE, establish customer care mechanisms, provide a guaranteed service level agreement (SLA), and attract high-value enterprise customers.

Figure 5. Combined architecture of functional platform and service support package.

Scalable deployment architecture

CEMC has a combined functional platform and service support package. The horizontal blue modules in Fig. 5 represent the functional platform, and the vertical yellow modules represent the service support package. The combined architecture has good scalability that manages QoE in accordance with operators’ current service management focus and future service development needs.

Telecom services are moving into the era of experience economy. This requires network OAM to be customer centered. With ZTE’s end-to-end CEMC solution, front-end sales and customer service sectors can interact effectively with back-end network planning and optimization, OAM, and information support sectors. The solution makes QoE visible, controllable, and traceable and helps operators compete in the experience economy era.