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Home - Key
Questions - Fixed Networks: Section
6 - Question 15
Question 15: Where do the customers/users fit into
the picture?
Until this point customers and users have been the great silent force in
the story of the evolution of the new telecoms industry. But is this not
justifiable since we all know what customers want, don't we?
Wrong! We do not!
Alexander Graham Bell assumed that very few people would want to use
the phone he had invented since reception was unclear and sound could only be
transmitted over short distances. Besides there was the seemingly superior
telegraph. He therefore tried, unsuccessfully, to sell his patents to Western
Union for a mere $100,000.
In the early 1980s AT&T predicted, on the basis of advice from the
consultancy company McKinsey, that by the year 2000 there would be a global
total of 900,000 mobile phones. In the event the figure was 400 million.
E-mail, that from the1980s was one of the major drivers popularising
the internet, was introduced by the users of the ARPANET (that laid the
basis for the subsequent introduction of the internet) and not by the original
designers of the ARPANET who were concerned mainly with
computer-to-computer communications. For further details see
Defining Visions and the first article in the
Articles Zone.
Have we become any better in understanding and delivering what customers
and users really want?
The following table comes from the UK's Telecommunications
Managers’ Association (TMA), which represents the telecoms managers of the
country’s largest users of telecoms services, and is based on data from a
survey of a significant number of the organisation’s members.
THE BIG UNKNOWN – THE CUSTOMER!
EVIDENCE FROM THE TMA’s SURVEY:
|
PROPOSITION |
PER CENT AGREE |
| Often suppliers do not spend enough
time to understand our business needs |
82% |
| Suppliers tend to sell technologies,
not solutions |
76% |
| Suppliers seek to provide long term
solutions and not short term products |
30% |
| Suppliers are not experts in
providing integrated solutions |
69% |
| Many companies waste money through
inappropriate buying of telecoms products and services |
80% |
Evidence such as this suggests that understanding the needs of specific
customer segments is a crucial area that still needs to be properly addressed.
Furthermore, the issue of understanding the customer touches on several of the
themes that have been analysed in Key Questions.
To begin with, a better understanding of the customer may provide an
important way whereby network operators and service providers, all using
similar technologies from the specialist technology suppliers, can
differentiate their offerings in order to increase their competitiveness.
Secondly, such an understanding may help smaller companies counter the
advantages of increasing returns and economies of scale and scope enjoyed by
their larger competitors.
Thirdly, the fact that users are frequently an important source of
learning and innovation – users have been particularly significant, for
example, in making many of the key innovations underlying the internet –
suggests that telecoms companies can devise new ways to creatively harness the
innovative potential of their customers by actively learning from them.
Do you agree?
How can the various players in the industry interact more creatively
with their customers and users?
How can they best come to understand the needs of specific customer
segments?
If you wish to express your views on questions such as these go to the
Workshop (Area 2). To
compare your visions with those of others go to Vision Check.
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