If you visit the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), you can download a diamond buying guide talking about the 4C’s used in grading a diamond (Diamond Buying Guide). They are Carat, Clarity, Cut and Color. In fact, every diamond is sold with a GIA certificate indicating it’s grade.
Unfortunately, we do not have a similar system to grade the quality of networks of our suppliers. So, in many cases, we might be relying on a bad supplier to meet our customer’s expectations.
Standard metrics like ASR, NER, congestion etc. concentrate on measuring the efficiency of the network and do not measure the quality of the network. Today, many wholesale operators are taken for a ride by organizations which rig efficiency metrics to favour themselves. So, any telecom operator relying on ASR, NER measurement for call routing start seeing the parameters steeply inclined to 100% by fly by night operators.
Supplier Network quality can be graded on the following parameters and it is not limited to just these parameters.
• Supplier Network’s Quality
• Supplier Network’s Cost Effectiveness
• Supplier Network’s Capacity
• Supplier Network’s Operation Friendliness
The moment you start measuring quality of the network, not only the efficiency of your network improves, but the credibility with your customer as well. In today’s world of cut throat competition, these are the easy measures which restores your customer’s confidence without any additional cost.
Grading Networks Using Scaffnet
When you use a wholesale voice terminator like Scaffnet, the suppliers are not just graded only on network efficiency but on other above listed parameters. The measurement becomes holistic and cannot be rigged.
For example, the network quality parameters will indicate a bad experience even if the efficiency parameters are skewed. If your customer is taken for a ride, he / she is going to slam the phone down and walk away with a bad experience. A Bad customer experience often translates to bad publicity and loss of credibility for your business. The customer starts seeing your network as the bad apple and will never understand that your underlying wholesale operator was faulty. In today’s world of zillion choices, the customer can easily switch to another operator.
Every call passing through Scaffnet’s network indicates the underlying suppliers network parameters and thus Scaffnet grades suppliers constantly. The grading parameters are periodically compared to the thresholds collected from the customer and the expectations are matched.
Scaffnet understands the importance of grading the supplier network and thus grades supplier networks similar to that of a diamond. Welcome to the new perspective of Telecommunications!!!
