Operators are striving to understand the performance of their networks from the customer's perspective in an effort to quell churn and position themselves as market leaders. That, in turn, is driving growth in the customer experience monitoring market, which Frost & Sullivan estimates will generate revenues of $2.54 billion in 2018.
The customer experience monitoring market earned revenues of more than $865.1 million in 2011, according to the research firm.
"The link between customer churn and QoE has been clearly established, which is why [customer experience] monitoring solutions have become a necessity," said Frost & Sullivan Program Manager Olga Yashkova. "With new high-capacity radio frequency access technologies gaining ground, such as long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE advanced, there is a real need to understand customer experience with networks and services."
Network complexity is increasing as operators enhance their offerings to include fixed-mobile convergence and Internet protocol (IP) technologies through both legacy and wireless systems. To monitor their customers' experience with these new offerings, carriers need meaningful information rather than vast amounts of data, Frost & Sullivan said.
The firm predicts that as end users become more cost-conscious, the market will see a shift towards software-based probes and software-as-a-service (SaaS) monitoring solutions.
Major infrastructure vendors are increasing involved in customer experience monitoring and management. Nokia Siemens Networks, for example, has made offering customer experience management (CEM) services to operators a core business focus.
For more:
- see this Frost & Sullivan release
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