Web Self-Service as a Business Differentiator and Cost Saver: An Orange UK Case Study

Today’s communications carriers face the daunting task of trying to become more innovative while adhering to strict business cost and profitability requirements. As traditional service types continue to mature, the greatest differentiator—apart from unique service offerings—is customer service and support at both the call center and web levels. Increasing the use of the web channel has been at the forefront for virtually every telecom provider today as a way to drive the retention of highvalue, web-savvy customers by providing a broad range of features and functionality through an online customer portal. It also drives greater efficiencies across the carrier’s order-to-cash-tocare processes. The eventual automation of operational support system (OSS)/billing support systems (BSS) functions at the web level represents an outstanding way to take the costs associated with manual processes out the business and is without question the ultimate goal of all telecom service providers