I have a friend in the USA who pays over 100 USD per month for their wireless service but cannot make a call in the local neighborhood outside their front door, despite buying the “best 5G network.” Downlink, when measured, was 2.5 Mbps, uplink 0.08 Mbps, ping of 92 ms, and jitter of 72 with one to two coverage bars. This explains my friend’s lack of ability to be able to make any Zoom calls or equivalent as well. The friend lives five minutes from a main eight-lane interstate in one of the largest metroplexes in the country. This is not some out-of-the-way location, but rather in a middle of dense urbanity.
The only reason the service works indoors is it uses the fixed broadband provided by a different service provider. My friend plans to change mobile network provider and is currently looking for somebody to help him choose.
We all know marketing promises are not universally true, and that has never been more correct than in the mobile industry, where service quality depends on radio waves' variability. The promise of having the best “5G network” might be correct in some parts of the country but not others.
Here is the truth. Poor 5G coverage is often covered up using home-fixed broadband access from another provider and voice-over Wi-Fi. The customer still sees 5G and makes “good” phone calls, but this is not because of their mobile service provider. For a fixed broadband provider that also provides mobile service, the only question is, “How do we find these customers that are being underserved by their existing mobile network provider and switch them to a better experience?”
One way is to use a fixed broadband customer support mobile phone application to test the quality of the cellular network coverage of the competitor. All mobile phones continuously “test” the surrounding mobile network signals to ensure the best signal possible is available at any time. Our product, Sympulse, has an SDK (software development kit) version that can be embedded in any application to measure the coverage and quality of both wireless and fixed broadband networks. This SDK can be embedded in the fixed broadband support app and collect data on the coverage and quality of the serving mobile network. This data can be analyzed to identify opportunities to offer better quality service. The person is already a customer, so this mobile service is an additional bundle sale on an existing billing relationship.
The result is better customer service and a better return from deployed network assets.
In addition, in cases where customers already have mobile phone service and fixed broadband service from the same provider, the same analytics can be run to ensure the existing customer is getting the service they have been promised and fix if not the case. This proactively resolves potential churn and creates a better total customer experience.
Lastly, this SDK can be embedded in all the official apps of the service provider, enabling employees to collect network statistics even in the background, along with the Sympulse application that they can install and perform speed tests and drive-test anytime. Data thus collected can be applied back into the network quality and for network optimization. The workforce is empowered to improve their customer service quality while doing their actual job.
Back to my friend in the USA. If their existing fixed broadband provider could proactively identify their unhappiness and make a mobile phone service offer, then:
Sympulse collates multiple data inputs from consumers as well as enterprise users on their network experience and generates interactive dashboards, customer experiences, network performance analysis and reports for various tests executed in the network. It harnesses modern technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning to facilitate comprehensive network analysis and high-quality customer service. To learn more, please go here.
The example in this article is one of the promises of our Sympulse application and SDK and one of the ways we creatively try to improve the connectivity experience for all potential customers.
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