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| Data Collection Services |
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| Benchmarking |
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| Performance Monitoring |
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| Network Planning |
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| Management Services |
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| Site Services & Quality Audit |
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Benchmarking Basics There are hundreds of formulas and methodologies that could be combined using different weightings to arrive at an overall Composite Score, from which it could be determined which carrier is “best.” In all likelihood, these diverse combinations could each arrive at contradictory conclusions. Different parameters such as network performance, network footprint, service pricing, customer support, and even handset selection affect, to varying degrees, customers’ overall opinions of a wireless carrier. These statistical unknowns are complicated even more by the immense amount of logistical and hardware complexities involved in benchmarking competing carriers in a mobile environment. The first step to tackling these issues is to provide focus. GWS’s benchmarking services determine which carrier performed best by testing network reliability – the single most valuable factor affecting subscriber attitudes, according to a 2002 Yankee Group study. The next step is to realize the need for objectivity in determining a composite score. GWS commissioned an independent study to analyze subscriber attitudes of key performance indicators and their effect on a subscriber’s opinion of network reliability. In this way the composite score reflects how a conglomeration of typical customers would collectively rate each carrier’s network performance. With this composite score formula, GWS can determine which carrier a population of customers would rate the best, and how the remaining competition rates. For Voice Benchmarking, each carrier’s composite score is based on key performance indicators (“KPIs”), which include Service Coverage, Access Failure Rate, Retainability, Voice Quality, and the Access Time of the network. Each is described below.Service Coverage: Is service even available? If a carrier does not even attempt to provide service where customers travel on a daily basis, those customers will become frustrated very quickly. Service Coverage is defined as the percentage of call attempts that fail due to no service. Access Failure Rate: Are calls getting blocked where customers know there is normally service? Access Failures provide a minor annoyance compared to the daily frustration experienced by service coverage limitations. After all, in most access failure cases, pressing the SEND button a second time will resolve the issue from the customer’s perspective. The Access Failure Rate is defined as the percentage of call attempts that fail in areas where there is service. Retainability: How often are customers rudely interrupted by dropped calls? Retainability reflects the percentage of good terminations. Carriers want to see retainabilities above 98%. Retainability is defined as the percentage of calls that were terminated by the customer rather than the network. Voice Quality: Even if your call did not drop, how often did you strain to understand your coversation (bad downlink quality)? How many times did your colleague ask you to repeat yourself (bad uplink quality)? Either situation can negatively shift the focus of the customer’s conversation to the wireless service. Voice Quality is the percentage of voice scores that occurred that would be classified as acceptable to a vast majority of users. Access Time: Do customers notice a delay before their calls started ringing? Access Time is the average amount of time elapsed between pressing the SEND button on the phone and hearing the first ringback tone. Sometimes this delay is considerable enough that the customer consciously notices it. This is by far the least important factor, but can be a determinant between two otherwise equal competitors. Similarly, the Data Benchmarking Report provides a Composite Score reflective of how a typical customer would rate each carrier’s data network performance. The weighted Score is based on the Service Coverage, Accessibility, Retainability, and Throughput of the network. The first three KPIs have been outlined above. Throughput: How much time will it take to download or upload a file? Throughput is the average rate at which a network transfers the data contained within a file. The faster the average throughput, the quicker you can transfer that file and get on with life. The KPIs listed above only provide a small subset of the competitive information provided in GWS’s Voice and Data Benchmarking Reports. There is a host of information relayed to you to provide guidance in how to alleviate problem areas particular to your network.
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