Browse Communications Products and Activities
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify common products and services unique to the communications industry.
- Describe common tasks performed by CSPs.
- Explain typical types of systems at communications companies.
What Do Communication Service Providers Sell?
Think about when you last bought communications equipment like a mobile phone handset, router, or cabling. You exchanged your money for a tangible good. But what about communications services such as your mobile phone plan and TV subscription? You pay for them, you know they’re there, and you use them, but you can’t often see or touch them.
These intangible communications services are generally sold using a subscription model. An example of this is a video streaming service, where you get lots of TV programs and movies included as part of your subscription, but you can rent the latest movies on demand for an additional one-off fee.
Subscription plans generally fall into three categories.
- Communications: Data, voice, and text, such as a mobile phone plan.
- Entertainment: Bundles of services from content providers, such as Netflix and Amazon.
- Digital Life: The connection of devices you use to access the internet, such as your Alexa app, smart bulbs, and home security.
Subscription plans can be prepaid or postpaid.
- Prepaid plans are generally cheaper than postpaid plans. The customer pays for the products and services before they use them. When the money runs out, the services stop—so the customer then adds more money.
- The customer pays for postpaid plans at the end of the month based on their usage.
Communications Products and Services
CSPs have unique industry terms and language surrounding their products and offers—and it can take a while to get your head round it. Here’s an introduction to some terms you can encounter when discussing customer offers.
Products and Services
Products and services are the things sold to your customers, and the terms are often used interchangeably. However, there are some subtle differences.
Products are mostly tangible items: things you can touch, such as a mobile phone handset or a router. Products are made, stored, transported, advertised, and then sold. Depending on the market, products may include items that are not traditionally considered communications products, such as hairdryers and IoT-capable household appliances.
Services are usually intangible. Often your customer can’t trial or view a service before buying it. Cloud storage, video streaming, and phone calls are all services. In some instances, your customer may be unaware they’re using a service, like a security monitoring service or a network stability test service.
Most products use a range of services as part of their functionality. For example, your mobile phone’s functionality includes video streaming, internet services, voice calls, SMS, and MMS services.
CSPs generally sort their products and services into product families based on their use. Fixed Line, Mobile, Internet, TV, Security, Cloud, and Enterprise Solutions are all product families.
Products and services may have attributes, which are specific characteristics that can vary from customer to customer. Attributes include SIM card identifiers, IP addresses, and product colors. While the CSP embeds attributes into the product or service, attribute values are selected by the customer or set automatically during the quote and order process.
Packages and Bundles
This product and service stuff is complex, right? Don’t worry—it gets easier from here on, with the introduction of packages and bundles.
Packages are groups of products and services sold as a single offer to the customer. These include special prices and discounts unique to the offer. For example, a mobile phone offer, which includes a mobile phone handset, charge cables, call service, SMS and MMS services, internet, and a monthly payment plan, is a package.
Bundles are groups of packages sold as a single offer to the customer. Bundles are common in the B2C market, where customers may prefer to buy most of their communications products and services from one supplier for a single flat rate. There are two types of bundles that are unique to the communications market.
- Triple play bundles contain three packages: broadband internet access, TV, and phone.
- Quadruple play (quad play) bundles extend the triple play bundles, adding wireless service provisions.
Bringing It All Together
Products, services, packages, and bundles are designed to suit customer requirements and listed, often in a shared catalog, for viewing during the sales and fulfillment processes.
Rules may be associated with each item to determine which customers may buy them, and what other products or services they may be bought with. Items may be priced to suit their context (like discounted rates for students) and may be manually adjusted by the salesperson as part of the quotation process. Managing the product catalog and associated pricing is an important part of product delivery, but let’s take a look at what other processes are involved.
Daily Activities of Communications Companies
You’ve learned about the communications products, services, packages, and bundles, but what do CSPs do to ensure their offers are implemented effectively?
- They manufacture products and services that meet customer requirements and incorporate appropriate technologies.
- They make their customers aware of the products and services suitable for their use.
- They efficiently deliver effective products and services.
To facilitate these goals, there are some daily activities common across all communications companies.
Communicate with Customers
With so many different channels of communication available, good customer service tailors the communication methods to the preferences of their customers. Whether it's incoming or outgoing communications, CSPs manage their customer contacts so they get what they need in a convenient way. This includes notifications about service activations and deactivations, renewals, and opportunities for customers to provide feedback.
Provide Quotes and Place Orders for Products and Services
Different customer segments tend to order products and services in different ways.
- Consumers often check product prices with many different businesses before they order a product. This could be through an online portal or with a sales agent.
- Business customers tend to build up relationships with a small number of CSPs and spend time on the negotiation process before completing their purchase.
Either way, it’s important that quotes are appropriate to the customer and correctly priced before the order is placed. Rules and processes must be in place to ensure orders are accurate and deliverable for the customer.
Create and Deliver New Products and Services
Commercial and technical teams work together in companies to create innovative products and services. They aim to launch products to market quickly for customers who may be interested.
Answer Customer Queries
Customers call the contact center to ask questions about their bill, order, or service delivery, but this doesn't have to be the end of the conversation. With the right tools, service agents can use this time to build the customer relationship, and to make suggestions, including ways for the customer to save money by switching products or services.
Manage Customer Moves and Changes of Service
All things change: People and businesses move premises and change the way they use their services. Service agents help customers who are moving to a different house and need their service changed. Service agents also work with business owners to upgrade products and services for their staff or to set up a new office network.
Collect Payment and Give Payment Assistance
Service agents often talk with their customers about payments. Sometimes this leads to conversations about nonpayment, payment assistance, or collections.
Deal with Service Issues and Callouts
Service outage notifications require two-way communication between a company and its customers. Customers can report a service outage and the company can communicate the outage to other customers through different channels. Customers may also request callouts for installations and ad-hoc issues.
Communicate and Implement Offer and Price Changes
Products, services, and prices change from time to time. Products become obsolete, and charges may go up due to cost increases. Businesses communicate these changes to customers and offer opportunities to discuss upgrades or additional products.
Systems That Support Processes
To manage their complex business activities, most CSPs divide their business systems into two groups.
- Operations support systems (OSS), which contain the software and infrastructure that support the network and maintain customers’ services.
- Business support systems (BSS), which are front-end systems like quoting, billing, and order management that drive business operations.
Established CSPs often have many OSS and BSS groups because of years of operations and mergers and acquisitions.
To stay relevant, CSPs must create a brand that resonates with people, provides exceptional service, and wins market share. Achieving these goals is a huge challenge with their current unwieldy and complex technology.
Industry Data and Process Standards
Running a CSP is a complicated business! Luckily lots of people in the industry are happy to share their lessons learned and best practices. TM Forum is an alliance of over 850 global companies that work together to establish best practices for product modeling, process design, systems integration, and other everyday business challenges faced by the communications industry.
TM Forum offers training and certification programs and are leaders in establishing industry standards, including:
- eTOM: A business process framework
- SID: An information framework, including product models
- TAM: An application framework
TM Forum also provides numerous REST-based open APIs to support integration.