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Business success requires productively and simply leveraging an increasingly rich menu of IP network-based Multimedia, Internet, Communications and Entertainment (MICE) capabilities. Due to the sophistication required to provide, support and manage MICE capabilities they are often purchased as services from a service provider. Because MICE services are critical to business success, organizations of all sizes are evolving to an enlightened, business-focused method of choosing network services and service providers called Total Customer Experience (TCE). This white paper describes the evolution toward a TCE approach and the benefits and clarity that TCE brings to the marketplace.
Network Services Evolution
The Internet began as a "best effort" service where all packets were created equal: a shared alternative to dedicated and expensive leased lines. As data, voice and video multimedia triple play services emerged packets were no longer equal. "Best effort" gave way to Quality of Service (QoS), which prioritizes packets while considering the packet delivery, delay, and delay variation requirements of the associated application. Recently, as users become more enlightened and experienced consumers, emphasis has begun to shift from Quality of Service to Quality of [user] Experience (QoE). QoE either measures, estimates or simulates human users' opinions of data, voice and video quality.
Multimedia services are becoming commoditized, as QoE metrics stabilize, prices approach the lowest levels they are likely to reach and the field of competitors becomes packed. Enterprises are searching for other meaningful points of differentiation and comparison besides just price. Truly savvy organizations are responding by adopting a Total Customer Experience approach to service selection.
Total Customer Experience (TCE) encompasses the relative value of five key selection criteria that go beyond price. TCE includes availability: solutions, collaboration, delivery, support and billing. TCE will be discussed in more detail after some important background information that sets the scene for a true appreciation of TCE and its benefits.
Who's In Charge?
When leased lines predominated, engineers provided specifications but the business office purchased the services, usually with little choice of provider. The business office was in charge. Next, in the "best effort" days of IP networking, the business office paid the bill but the network provider actually set the rules and tried to be fair to all parties, giving each packet an equal opportunity to share network resources. Then, the network provider was now in charge. Subsequently, in the QoS era the engineers were in charge. They juggled Type of Service (ToS) bits, ingress, queuing and buffer controls and other technical aspects of IP network implementation and operation to assure that various flavors of data, voice and video traffic receive proper marking, prioritization and handling. The engineers were now in charge. In the new QoE era control shifted from engineers to users - whose expert opinion, or at least a close mathematical approximation thereof - became the controlling factor. TCE puts the business office back in charge.
By using TCE to measure and compare service providers' relative scores on solutions, collaboration, delivery, support and billing the process of service provider selection is becoming a more business-centric function: control is shifting back to business management. Before we discuss TCE in more detail let's take a closer look at an important tool in documenting, describing and enforcing the needs of the purchaser, promises of the seller and penalties for not delivering as promised: the Service Level Agreement.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
The SLA is a valuable tool. The SLA survives the evolution to Total Customer Experience and its role increases in importance. As small to medium enterprises already know the Service Level Agreement is a contract between an organization and an outside service provider. Larger organizations may have an internal department that acts as a service provider. The larger organizations will recognize the SLA as a contract with an external, or internal, service provider organization.
In either case a Service Level Agreement generally describes contract requirements, and penalties for noncompliance, in two broad areas: administrative and operational. Administrative requirements usually include lead times for establishing new services and connecting new sites to the network, decommissioning existing sites and restoration of service in case of service interruption. Operational requirements can get somewhat creative but at the bare minimum provide baselines for service availability, packet delivery, packet delay and delay variation.
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