Network vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has launched a self-care app for Facebook, allowing operators’ customers to personally manage their fixed and mobile telecom services from their phones. 

The app enables end users to check their balance, buy special offers and subscribe to services from their respective service providers. Customers will also receive rewards for recommending services to friends. 

The app aims to offer an improved service from operators by allowing them to engage with customers where they spend most of their time online. It also hits a sweet spot with operators by setting up a self-care platform, freeing up the carrier’s in house resources. 

“The beauty of the Facebook app is that it engages with people on their preferred social networking site,” said Rick Centeno, head of business support systems at NSN. 

“People spend more time on social networks than individual websites. With this Facebook app, Nokia Siemens Networks helps operators to connect with people in a familiar setting where they already spend their online time. It takes self-care to a new level.” 

NSN cited an April 2011 research report from Ovum, ‘Defining the Rules of Engagement for Customer Service in Social Media’, which claimed that “social media represents a significant opportunity for enterprise customer service.” On this premise, it developed an app that can also provide instant access to account information such as prepaid and postpaid balance, recent call duration, cost and contact details – all within the familiar Facebook site. 

“This first social network integration will enrich a wide range of existing operator processes such as convergent charging, self-care, campaign management, business analytics and customer experience management to improve customer experience in a very efficient way. The integration is based on Nokia Siemens Networks’ modular charging engine and integration framework,” said Centeno. 

The application enhances Nokia Siemens Networks’ range of self-care portals – share@once – that facilitate direct interaction between operators and customers. All three share@once self-care portals – for Facebook, smartphones and the web – are based on Nokia Siemens Networks’ modular and scalable charge@once unified platform, which provides a unified view for operators of special offers, and charging and billing for all types of voice and data services in all networks, independent of whether it is a prepaid or postpaid scheme. 

Christian Saxtoft, product manager at NSN explained: “It comes as a suite of applications that we’re launching as a common framework, with common features and abilities. One is this Facebook application, one is an app for Android and one is a traditional self-service application, so the aim is to cover all our basis and deliver the service to the customer in an environment they’re familiar with.”

More content like this in the broadband zone

“Nokia Siemens Networks is presenting a refreshing end-to-end vision of how CSPs can better meet their customers’ needs through self-care, while also reducing their costs and becoming more commercially agile”, added Teresa Cottam, research director and founder, Telesperience. “We’ve seen other companies articulate parts of this vision, but few others – if indeed any others – can deliver this in its entirety today.”