Case Studies

The case studies presented below range from quick wins to managed services that have been consistently delivered over many years. Symmetry Solutions has an established track record of working with telecommunications service providers, vendors and consultancies to assure the integrity of services and revenues whilst delivering a first-rate experience for customers.

1. Identifying the Root Cause of Customer Complaints

A UK telco asked Symmetry for help after a series of complaints affected the company's reputation.

Our consultants combined the information from customer complaints with the analysis provided by Symmetry TRAP to pinpoint anomalies in reference data. Legacy problems in reference data were found to be causing 70% of customer complaints, 50% of trouble tickets and 50% of revenue and cost issues.

After locating the specific errors we ensured similar mistakes would never occur again by implementing both preventative and detective controls that the client could efficiently maintain.

There was a massive 87% reduction in trouble tickets as a result of the immediate fixes to reference data. These fixes were also estimated to have resolved charging errors worth around $7M per year. Further profitability gains as a result of increased customer satisfaction were estimated to be worth $60M per year. There was a 12% improvement in the client's measures of customer satisfaction.

2. Audit of Revenue Streams

A telco in the Middle East requested a comprehensive audit of its services and product offerings to have a full understanding of the profitability of each revenue stream.

We undertook a comprehensive review over the course of 9 weeks. This led to the identification of several configuration issues that were resulting in substantial revenue losses. New revenue generation opportunities were also identified.

Some of the issues identified included minimum call charges not being set or being set below the level described in the contracted terms and conditions. Off-net voice was charged as on-net voice for some number ranges, Premium rate voice services were being sold below retail cost.

The service provider estimated an annual increase to revenues worth $6M in total. This was comprised of a $0.5M improvement from the updating of minimum call charges, a $2.5M improvement in revenues from correcting errors relating to off-net voice services, and the ending of $3M of revenue leakages related to premium rate services.

3. Review of SMS Services to Enhance Revenues

A service provider in the Middle East wanted to get a better understanding of its SMS services to ensure it was collecting the maximum in revenues.

Symmetry Solutions undertook a comprehensive review of the client's SMS services using a mixture of traditional consultancy techniques combined with the output from our data analytics products. The client's staff also received bespoke training about how to manage reference data.

These activities allowed Symmetry Solutions to obtain a true understanding of the profitability of SMS services. We identified aspects that required immediate resolution, including:
bundle arbitrage for SMS messages and international voice calls, SMS interworking issues, and problems with the customer's reference data tables.

There was an annual uplift to revenues of $6.9M, whilst there was an 80% improvement in the optimisation of data.

4. Prevention of Recurring International Revenue Share Fraud Attacks

An operator in the AsiaPac region suffered two separate international revenue share fraud (IRSF) attacks which may have both stemmed from the same fraudster.

The numbers called during the IRSF attacks were compared with Symmetry's PRISM database. Almost all of the calls were a complete or near match to data in PRISM, indicating the fraudsters had acquired the use of number ranges from known enablers of crime.

Proactive use of PRISM for monitoring and blocking fraudulent calls prevented further IRSF attacks from succeeding.

Education

5. Review of Customer Experience and Regulatory Compliance

A British mobile operator wanted to comply with new regulatory requirements to notify customers that their contracts were reaching their end. This also required them to repeat the most important details of the customer's current contract and other options they could take instead. A related requirement expected the operator to advise customers about the best tariff for them on an annual basis. The importance of this change to the business required the operator's CEO to personally oversee the quality of the new customer experience.

Symmetry Solutions undertook an ‘ABC’ approach to reviewing the operator's entire product catalogue and all of its tariffs.

A for Assurance: Create new process controls to protect against bad data.

B for Business Insights: Use data to give the operator a detailed understanding of each customer's needs.

C for Customer Experience: Design a platform that will generate targeted offers with the ability to look at and react to many separate factors.

The operator implemented Symmetry PRO, allowing them to deliver a mix of targeted offers that boosted customer satisfaction as well as improving revenue flows.

PRO was configured to recommend a sophisticated mix of tariffs based on the historical usage of the customer and the potential value of the customer if they upgraded their service plan or chose to change their handset.

6. Correctly Configuring International Services

A service provider in the UK asked Symmetry for help because they were worried that configuration errors could have a negative impact on revenues.

Our professional services team used Symmetry TRAP to obtain a deep analysis of the client's international services. They found multiple configuration errors.

Some of the errors discovered included services to a Caribbean country being charged at the default rate for the USA, premium rate roaming texts being incorrectly priced, and the wrong mark-up being applied to some other roaming services.

The configuration changes ended leakages that were worth between 60% to 90% of the value of some services.