Amdocs Strolls Further Down Customer Experience Path

Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) has introduced a new lineup of service offerings designed to help its customers make the transition to marketing their own products and strategies in the digital medium. Amdocs began realigning its product portfolio in this direction last year, when it introduced the Customer Experience Systems (CES) blueprint.

Its new service offering, Amdocs Consulting, is aimed at smoothing the launch of such next-generation applications as digital commerce, and search and advertising.

Such a push has become necessary for Amdocs; it holds considerable market share in the telecom industry, which is currently undergoing a sea change in services and competition.

Telecom service providers are battling for market share with a new breed of players and thus require a new approach to CRM, noted Shira Levine, senior research analyst for next generation OSS and billing at IDC.

In short, "they are moving from differentiating on metrics such as price and bundles of minutes to differentiating on the customer experience they are able to provide," Levine told CRM Buyer. "This shift necessitates a significant transformation -- from both a process and a tools perspective -- as they build the customer-facing systems required to support this new paradigm."

Assess and Strategize

In building Amdocs Consulting, the company partnered with the University of Oxford to develop an assessment service it calls the "Customer Experience Maturity Assessment." This test helps users measure the level at which their current customer experience impacts their customer base, compared to industry best practices.

It also provides recommendations to help organizations define, personalize and implement a relevant strategy . Modules in the assessment include customer experience strategic planning, customer intelligence, cross channel optimization and customer experience measurement.

Also in its consulting portfolio are business optimization and transformation services, including customer lifecycle management, content revenue accelerator, billing operations optimization and order-to-activation.

Mobile Advertising

Last month's release of the search and digital advertising module is illustrative of Amdoc's new focus, Scott Kolman, managing director in product marketing, told CRM Buyer. Designed for the mobile environment -- a space that thus far has eluded a successful search strategy -- the application targets telecom companies and mobile advertisers. It allows end users to search for, say, local services or restaurants.

The application leverages information about the user -- such as place of residence -- to make the searches relevant and thus easily digestible for the mobile format, Kolman said. Companies are in the very early stages of testing and deploying the app.

Amdocs' CES product portfolio is essentially a realignment of old products to complement the addition of new applications. Offerings include new storefront capabilities incorporated into its Qpass digital commerce platform, which allow service providers to create a personalized retail experience, and new user interface technology.