It takes super human effort to be ‘user experience centric’
Swedish techco Ericsson has renewed its global partnership with Norwegian telco Telenor with one major difference. It’s not about the network any more, it’s all about the user experience, according to an Ericsson statement. The instant fine-tuning of customer experience is such a physically and mentally demanding task that an artificially intelligent (AI) cognitive engine is now running the show.
This week Ericsson announced it has extended its Global Framework Agreement for operational services and software with Telenor to October 2024. From now on though, the Ericsson Cognitive Software suite will be doing all the planning and tuning.
In the past the Telenor-Ericsson pact has jointly received an industry award for CDC achievements and the Ericsson Operations Engine’s AI powered has imposed a data-driven discipline on network managed services. This has helped Telenor to keep pace with the changes in connectivity as it evolves. It also gave customers the benefit of secure and reliable network performance and a constantly improving user experience.
Meeting a ‘customer centric’ brief is much more demanding. In future Telenor and Ericsson will collaborate further to explore customer centric services in areas like Private Network and Cloud based services that can use the developing wisdom being built on experiences and new capabilities being learned in the Common Delivery Centre.
Rita Mobkel, Head of Global Customer Unit Telenor at Ericsson said that Ericsson has helped Telenor create sustainable differentiation for its customers with better performances all round. They achieved this by changing their operational focus from ‘network-centric’ to ‘user experience-centric’ operations, using automation and artificial intelligence. Mokbel said the Ericsson-Telenor pact is “striving for continuous improvement [using the] Ericsson Operations Engine for further excellence.”
The original Global Framework agreement, signed in 2017, was aimed at creating a Common Delivery Centre (CDC) for multiple services such as Network Operations (including enhanced Network Operations Centre automation) Network Design, Planning and Optimisation, First Level Operations and intelligent Field Operations, Project Management and Network Implementation Services.
The framework agreement supports the partnerships between Ericsson and Telenor Malaysia (Digi) and Thailand (dtac). “Ericsson’s Cognitive Software suite unleashes the full potential of next-generation networks,” said Pradeep Kotnala, Head of Network Operations and Managed Services for Ericsson South-east Asia, Oceania and India.