Thursday, January 21, 2010 -- Regan Hughes' blog:
Excellent customer service has become a key differentiator for a lot of new market entrants in the service provider space. But what does that really mean? And how do you tangibly achieve excellent customer service?
There's no single answer of course. Any answer has to include process, people and systems. But a big part is having visibility and control across third party access. Without these aspects, the other elements become redundant.
So how do you get that visibility and control?
A NID is a Network Interface Device - a demarcation device for Carrier Ethernet services that is replacing the familiar terms of NTU, NTE, CPE, etc.
The big difference between a decent NID and previous incarnations, is that this device gives service providers a set of service management tools.
These tolls let allow service providers to put some substance behind 'excellent customer service' catch phrases that many new entrants put a lot of emphasis on.
The Metro Ethernet Forum has been working with various standards bodies to pull together some of these tools.
These include keep-alives for fault isolation and SLA reporting, loopbacks for throughput and commissioning tests, hierarchical QoS, and features such as dying gasp that send an alarm whenever the power goes down at the customer site.
These tools finally let service providers deliver end-to-end guarantees and proactive fault response across third party circuits.
When you match those tools with best of breed wholesale access, good people and process, it can make an environment ripe for some healthy competition in the WAN service provider space, with a genuine capability to provide excellent customer service.
- Regan Hughes, Kordia
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