Virgin Media O2 and Three UK are both working with Amdocs on projects designed to improve their service offerings and provide a better experience for customers.
And given the state of play for both in the UK telecoms market at present, it’s probably not a bad idea.
Virgin Media O2 this week revealed that it is losing broadband customers – 1,000 of them in Q1, to be exact – at a time at which it is finally making a concerted push towards rolling out fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) across its footprint. Whether customers are leaving for better deals, more advanced or reliable network technology, better customer care, or any other reason, VMO2 can’t afford to let this blip in its numbers become a trend. Competition is growing in the UK high-speed broadband market and the cable operator cannot rest on its laurels as the country’s de facto second player any longer.
Hence, it’s a timely announcement from Amdocs, which revealed it has been chosen by VMO2 to provide a flexible entertainment subscription experience. Essentially, that means VMO2’s customers will be able to add new OTT subscriptions to their plan; constraints of wallet aside – it’s perhaps not the greatest time to be encouraging consumers to add yet more paid-for options – this is about making life easier for customers, and presumably making them happier customers as a result.
The project will see Amdocs deploy its MarketONE cloud native SaaS platform on the public cloud to deliver new digital and OTT subscription services, making it easy for VMO2 to add new content partners.
“With our MarketONE SaaS platform, we are bringing together industry-leading capabilities to help Virgin Media O2 grow its media and entertainment business while providing end-users with a centralized and frictionless experience,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, Group President of Technology and Head of Strategy at Amdocs.
It’s fair to say that Virgin customers are probably not used to anything like a frictionless experience.
The telco once again found itself on the wrong side of Ofcom’s broadband, landline, and pay TV complaints tables in its most recent publication, posted last month. It clearly needs all the help it can get.
Amdocs also used the word ‘frictionless’ in the announcement that it has just completed a 15-month project with Three UK to create a new platform to provide the mobile operator’s enterprise customers with an improved omnichannel digital experience. Amdocs served as the lead systems integrator on the project, implemented a number of cloud-native digital enablement solutions, and is booked in to operate the platform for the next six years, providing services including next-generation automation, machine learning and anomaly-detection capabilities. It also worked on the development of a mobile app that Three UK will launch soon in a bid to provide a consumer-like experience for its business customer.
That sounds good in theory, although it’s worth noting that Three UK was also in the below average half of Ofcom’s latest table on complaints in the mobile market. That said, the level of complaints from consumers across the UK mobile space is pretty low.
“The fast deployment of the full B2B BSS/OSS stack is one of the most successful IT transformations we have experienced. We now have a future-proof digital platform on which our exciting propositions can be launched in the coming months and years,” said Mike Tomlinson, Managing Director, Business at Three UK.
Three is saying all the right things. The proof will be in the impact on its customer numbers and customer experience scores.