Helping our partners digitalize and automate their operations. - ETI
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March 24, 2023

Helping our partners digitalize and automate their operations.

The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Broadband Bunch. I am Pete Pizzutillo and I am joined today by a regional customer business executive, a CBE from Amdocs, Iris Harel. Iris, how are you? Thanks for joining the show.

Iris Harel:

Hey Pete. How are you? Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. I’m looking forward to it. I know you have an interesting background. We like to kick off our episodes just to give people some context about how did Iris end up here today.

Iris Harel:

Well, there is a long answer and there is a short answer. We’ll do the short answer this time. Basically, started my way as part of the R&D on the Amdocs side in Israel and after several years had done relocated to the States. I started my way as the head of the customer operation in our data center in Champaign and after a couple of years, I moved to New York to be part of what used to be the Cablevision account for Amdocs. Did multiple activities over there including account management, and was in charge of the consolidation between settling and cable vision that became LTCUSA. Nowadays, I’m doing what we call the original CBE role for the connectivity media and technology division at Amdocs. I’m in charge of all the meteor operators in the United States. Very interesting role. I love what I do, and I wake up every morning with a smile.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Well, if anybody’s been out at end of the industry events, you’ve probably seen yours running about. So she’s definitely out on the speaking circuit and had a chance to run into her at Cable Tech in Philadelphia as well as articles. I mean, you’ve got a nice set of blogs and one of the topics on there caught my attention and I really want to dig into it because it’s a bit provocative. So you wrote about the death of the residential customer. I mean a little morbid, but, okay, what did you mean by that?

Iris Harel:

So basically when you look at what’s going on right now, I think Covid just expedited the process anyway. I don’t think that the traditional, in the original definition, the way you and I used to know it, of who is the residential customer, especially for the cable industry, continues to exist. The reason for that is that you used to have, and then you can look at your own house, you used to have, I don’t know, a single device. Everybody would go to work, would go to school, and really not much activity around the house itself. That was kind of the differentiator between being a residential customer to a small medium business or enterprise or business client.

I think the more you see now the more and more devices are being operated from that house. So especially with Covid and the fact that everybody move to work remotely and learn remotely, if you look at now every household you have, I don’t know, almost 20, maybe sometimes more than 20 devices. This is becoming no longer a single device location. It’s like a small entity. Small business. And that’s what I said that the definition as we used to know it, I don’t think it ceases to exist. It doesn’t exist anymore.

Pete Pizzutillo:

No, that’s a great point. There are a lot of behavior changes. Does that mean the residents should be paying what the small businesses were paying for the Broadband?

Iris Harel:

I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s the other way around. I think that what it emphasized now, and especially for all the service providers that are out there, is that they need to pay attention to their customers and see that now the consumption and their request to have more connectivity just increased dramatically. I don’t think it’s even a linear increase, it’s like an exponential one. That means that there is going to be a different set of requirements and demands from the customer coming to the service provider. That’s what it means.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. So you mentioned a lot of things in terms of what the potential residential services would be and we see a lot of things shifting around there. So what is it that you’re seeing from the network operators that you’re dealing with in terms of looking for value-added services to the new residential customers?

Iris Harel:

So first of all, I think I would divide the answer into three parts. I think that there is a difference or there is going to be a change in the services that will be consumed. I think that some of it are because of the nature of the next generation. Some of it is because of potentially some signals that there’s going to be a recession. I think that customers, especially the private sector, will start consuming differently the services around the Triple Play. I think that they would start eliminating some of it and would focus mainly on high-speed data or broadband.

The other thing that I think would have to change is the way service providers are looking at the network and the connectivity. If you’re asking me the crux of the matter today is connectivity and data. I think data is the new currency and connectivity will have to become a commodity very soon. The other thing that I think might happen is a change because of technology. Technology is evolving, and the need for having some of the equipment today around the house, I think well over the years would be gone. I think that the way people would consume the services will change. I think that many people will start looking at their smartphone as the main device that would operate many things around the house. I think the houses will become more sophisticated and we can talk about it in more detail later.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I mean there’s a lot of innovation that’s pushing the number of devices. That’s really where the exponential growth is. This is what we talk about with our network operators is, the populations in your communities aren’t exponential. They’re not going to grow. I mean in most cases, but the number of devices, the number of endpoints is. So is your network, is your support model, or are they prepared to handle those types of exponential growths? You said a couple of things there too that were interesting around the data is the new currency. Let’s just dig into that a little bit. What are your thoughts there?

Iris Harel:

I think that today everything is all about data and the way you profile your customer and what you know about your customer and how you serve them better. At the end of the day, you as a service provider would like to make sure you have loyalty to your customers, but you have to know them. You have to understand what are their needs, and where their focus is. What are the main things that they’re interested in? If they’re interested in gaming. They’re interested in streaming. They’re interested in doing different… They’re interested in having a smart house with a smart refrigerator and smart lightning and an alarm. So it’s all about how you start looking at the data that you already have today, profiling your customer, and start addressing their needs to increase the level of satisfaction. That’s in my opinion, the crux of the matter.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I think people like Google and Amazon with their in-home devices have made trillions of dollars off of the data. But there’s some reluctance I see from some of the regional and smaller providers in terms of crossing that privacy line. Do you have any thoughts on how to counsel folks that understand that I need to get to the data but I also need to be a trusted provider or presence in my community?

Iris Harel:

So first of all, you hit the night on the head. Absolutely right. There is a fine line between those two things. I just think that some of it are, I would say a perception, and I’ll give you an example. When you go today to your Amazon application and sometimes you get popups or recommendations of things that they would recommend for you to buy. So how do they do that? They do it because they know you, but you don’t read those suggestions as an intrusion into your privacy because you got used to the fact that this is something that is being recommended to you actually take advantage of it. You’re actually benefiting from that.

I think I would say the dimension of perception and also the fact that the consumers will have to get used to the fact that by definition some of the characteristics of which, and every one of them is accumulated. I don’t think that people are today not aware of what it means to have cookies that are collecting information about them when they go to the website. But yes, there is a fine line. I don’t think I have the solution for that in hand, but this is something that for sure will have to be, I would say that the compass or the one that determines how service providers are actually providing those recommendations versus staying away from some.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah, it’s interesting. That’s been an argument for a while, but you can’t refute the proliferation of all these in-home devices. So people seem to complain about it but seem to just deal with it in what I think best practices that I’ve seen from operators is really transparency and being upfront and here’s how we’re handling your data or if you want to opt-out, here are the ways that you can opt-out. Some of the things that the European side of the problem has already mandated that has to be in place. But we don’t really have those types of data privacy regulatory issues yet.

Iris Harel:

But I think it’s evolving. I think it’ll come. It’s just a matter of time.

Pete Pizzutillo:

So that’s great counsel to network operators too, is how hard it is to untangle a data and system mess and retroactively. So if you are thinking about data privacy as a pending regulatory requirement coming, then it’s something that you need to start planning for and thinking about today.

Iris Harel:

Correct. That’s correct. That’s absolutely correct.

Pete Pizzutillo:

So lots of different models of service usage. Innovation is coming. You mentioned focus. How does this change the support model? It’s not just a technology issue. I have people that I need on the field service side but on the customer service side. What are the conversations that you’re having with the organizations you’re working with about this impact on thinking differently about the support?

Iris Harel:

So I’m not going to get into the specifics of the conversation, but I will go back to the point of the data and I want to show how the data is tightly coupled with those things. So for example, if you are going to look at the way you contacted the call center up till now. Usually, the call would start with, “okay sir, what’s your account number?” As opposed to if you have the data and you can upfront bring up the 360 views of the customer, this is something we do in Amdocs very well. You bring up the 360 views of the customer. Your CSR already knows who’s the customer. If something happened to them in the last 24 hours. If they had an outage or if there is any upcoming activity about them. Are there any reasons why they would call?

It’s a whole different conversation from what I just described, meaning it would say, “Hello Pete, how are you? I see that you had an outage last night. How is everything now? Is everything okay?” It’s a whole different conversation and it gives the customer a better and comfort level that the service provider actually knows me. They know who I am and they know why I would be probably calling and they would address my needs. That’s one.

The second thing, which is something we need to take into account is the next generation. I think that the next generation doesn’t want to talk to anyone. They don’t want to call the contact center. They don’t want anyone to call them. They prefer to say exchange text messages or go to the app and just get everything resolved over there. I think that would be a key thing that would determine the way the support will be conducted in the future. I think that more and more you’ll see things shifting to the self-service channels rather than the CSR talking to someone just because the next generation is working differently. But again, even with them, even if it’s a conversation over text or through the app, it’s still being driven by the data. Going back to what I said about the data again is at the heart of those conversations and the ability to support and actually give you an educated discussion with the customer, would increase loyalty.

Pete Pizzutillo:

A hundred percent. That’s the paradox that I see is that people are worried about this intrusion into data or reluctant to modernize their systems into platforms, but they still want to have intimacy. You mentioned a couple of things. The intimate relationship with customers, regardless of your scale as being local.

Iris Harel:

Correct.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Self-service is able to enable and empower your subscribers and your partners to do what they want to do without having to talk to somebody. But also self-healing. That’s another topic that comes up on the network side, but none of that is attainable until you start getting the foundation intact and modernized and then focusing, and you do that from a data-centric perspective. Does that make sense?

Iris Harel:

That’s correct.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. I don’t know how to-

Iris Harel:

Let’s articulate that. And again, I don’t see so much of a contradiction between those two things. I think that modernization should take place. I think that, as I said, there is a fine line between knowing and addressing the customer in a comfortable way versus the intrusion itself. The fact that we know that you had an outage yesterday and we are addressing it upfront. I think that’s a very good point. That’s like those brownie points that the service provider will get from their customers because it shows that the service provider cares. Okay. It’s not just an entity that we pay, for the service.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah, yeah, totally agree. You mentioned a couple of different services, so just thinking ahead about the next five or 10 years. I think we’re finally at that inflection point where people stop talking about access and start thinking about the advanced applications that can ride on this fabric that we’re creating. What are you excited about in the next couple of years in terms of potential services that you see possible?

Iris Harel:

I’m not sure I would use the word excited in this context, but definitely I want to see the ability to control as much as possible from the house without the need to go out. So for example, if I could have my refrigerator changed, check whatever I have in and submit a request to the supermarket and I’ll get a delivery. That for me would be a great experience. I don’t like to go to the supermarket so if such a service can happen for me, it’s absolutely fantastic. I’m sure if you would talk to my kids they would tell you that they would look for a solution to solve their homework but I don’t think we have something like that coming up.

But yes, I would like to see more and more my ability to control many things within the house in a secure manner and if possible from one device. I want to have fewer devices. I want to have fewer wires connected. I want to see fewer wires running on the floor. That would be my ideal solution in the house and outside the house, same. I want to see fewer and fewer wires out. I want to be able to see more of the connectivity being accessible and as much as possible accessible everywhere. I don’t think we should have this terminology of unserved and underserved territories anymore. I think it should be available everywhere.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. I’m going to one-up you on the grocery thing there because I just want the button that you push and says, make me a pizza. I just want the pizza to come out of the wall as they do in Sci-Fi. Let that get there, dang it.

Iris Harel:

Exactly. I think if you [inaudible 00:16:33], the same manner, the way you can transfer from New York to, for example, Atlanta for a meeting and then come back like these Star Trek, that would be even better.

Pete Pizzutillo:

That would be awesome. You’re listening to the broadband Bunch. We’ve been speaking with Iris Harel, she’s a regional customer business executive at Amdocs and we’ve been talking about the death of the residential customer. Part of what we talked about in terms of the changing dynamic for residents is they need more reliable connectivity. Where do you see communities, now that we’ve got all these individuals wired up and have better service, how does that impact the overall communities?

Iris Harel:

I think it has a conflict impact. So on one hand there is going to be a demand to have connectivity in much better quality at lower prices as a community. But the issue is that the more you have connectivity in the house, you would see less interaction outside. Meaning I think that social interaction, the actual physical social interaction between people would be degraded. Not sure this is a good thing, but that’s probably one of the outcomes of the fact that people will have everything in the house and everything is accessible. I guess this is one of the skills that we will have to artificially augment and make sure that the next generations are actually not neglecting that capability.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Well, there’s another way to look at that too. I mean if your community network is ubiquitous and you have this reliable, secure ability to move between, the challenge that we have today is moving between my cell phone outside into my wifi or my wireless inside my home. When those boundaries start getting broken down and it’s seamless, then maybe the house becomes more than the boundaries of your house. So what if you could do your stuff anywhere in the community? So I do agree that we are getting kind of a digital shut-in effect from making things very comfortable within the house and that has an impact on our children.

Iris Harel:

I’ll tell you something from my own house. My husband says the minute he has enough connectivity to actually browse through the internet and go to the Grand Canyon instead of actually traveling there. This is what he’s going to do, meaning we’re not going to travel anymore and I’m so afraid of that.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Oh No.

Iris Harel:

I hope we never get to this situation. But seriously, I mean with some of the progress in the technology aspect, you would see that you would have more virtual tours than ever and you would be able to do so because of the ubiquitous connectivity. Sorry.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah.

Iris Harel:

But it also would reduce the number of people going out there and actually traveling and actually doing the hiking and things like that.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Just think of that movie, the Disney movie where everybody just sits in their chair and watches TV.

Iris Harel:

Exactly.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I don’t remember what that was called. So you got a lot of great ideas and thoughts here that you’re seeing. What can operators do today to start addressing or thinking about some of the challenges that you’ve laid out here?

Iris Harel:

So I’m not the one to give any recommendation to the service providers. I can just say that I think generally speaking, everybody should start looking at the future, the sooner, the better. That’s one thing. Start looking at even crazy ideas of how to do things and how to address some of the challenges because it’s not going to be that long until those things will actually happen. I think that whoever is going to adopt the vision quicker would be the actual winner. Constant learning, and constant looking at strategies and vision are critical for an organization to continue and survive.

The pace of changes nowadays is extraordinary. I don’t think we ever had something like that and it would just become faster and faster. So it requires a different skill set. It requires a different way of looking at strategy and vision. I don’t think we can even say that going forward we’ll have to define the vision for the next three years or five years, it’ll have to be six months to a year. It’s something that would require or demand us to think about things more frequently and to be more flexible and to be flexible in the way we think and come up with innovation and innovative ideas constantly. It’s like there’s not going to be a wave. You have to constantly evolve and constantly innovate.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Well, you mentioned something else earlier on around affordability and so there’s a lot of money being poured in. There’s a lot of potential overlap in overbuilding and different solutions being rolled out to the same areas. But we have recession potentially looming, and inflation’s rising. So regardless of the strides that we’ve made to reduce the broadband’s impact as a percentage of wallet, we’re not making as many strides. So when you think about affordability, if you’re talking to a network operator, what are some of the things that they should be thinking about in terms of how to take costs and wait out of the process? Is it purely innovation?

Iris Harel:

It’s innovation and bundling in the way I see it. It’s like giving more for the same buck. Meaning to start-

Pete Pizzutillo:

What about-

Iris Harel:

Thinking about different services under the same umbrella.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Also, in going back to your point about data, I’m sure you see the inside of a lot of organizations more than most of us. Do people know where their systems are? Do they have a good understanding of the architecture and the data and the gaps that they have to start attacking us?

Iris Harel:

I don’t know.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah, I mean that’s something that I’ve seen is moving towards modernization without fully understanding. It’s a normal maturity condition.

Iris Harel:

Do you see it more often than before?

Pete Pizzutillo:

I see them more often. No, I think it’s always endemic to this market’s maturity of just understanding… There’s all this consolidation that’s happened. Typically people buy in fits and spurts and a lot of the equipment and physical assets drive the systems. So your replenished rate is what, every 10 or 15 years and it comes with that new operating system.

Iris Harel:

Correct.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I think a lot of the systems have been functionally built. So they’re siloed naturally by how they’ve been constructed. Now you have a very complex integration strategy that’s kind of ad hoc. So I think if you can put all that onto a table, work in different functional areas and financial services insurances, insurance companies, having that enterprise architectural approach is pretty paramount. A, to understand what you have but where you’re going towards and I think those are things that lead to affordability. Does that make sense?

Iris Harel:

It makes sense and it goes back to what I said before, that you have to strategize and create the vision constantly. You would not be able to lay on your laurel for, I don’t know, a year or two years and assume that whatever you designed three years ago, two and a half years ago was still okay and would still be sustainable.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I agree. So we got 2023 kind of right around the corner. We mentioned a couple of things about the recession. What else? What are the big challenges that you see that you’re most concerned with in the next 12 months?

Iris Harel:

I see many things in the industry and you all see it. It’s not something that you can avoid listening to. You see the satellite industry changing with the LEO satellite. You see what Starlink is doing and the way it looks at things and the paradigms of how to provide connectivity. You see the need to have broadband everywhere and you see the financial incentives that are being given to that. Recession is definitely something we see and we need to be ready for. I don’t think I even so one expert saying that there’s not going to be a recession.

I also think that we would see more and more different bundles and the bundling concept of how to provide different services under the same umbrella for sure. But we would also see, in my opinion, some changes in the way service providers are looking at their customers. I think that the change has started, but it will continue. I don’t think there is a way back. I think that we’re actually moving forward faster. I think that they would start looking at the points of how to maintain loyalty. How to give more for your buck. How to make sure that there is an ability to answer also the demands of the next generation, not just the current one. Those are the things that I think we would see in 2023 and probably 2024. As I said, my wishlist was also to have fewer devices in the house. To have more connectivity, not to pay more for it, and to have the ability to have it accessible everywhere, not just in the places where it’s obvious.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah, no, that’s a lot. Hopefully, it’s not overcomeable. I enjoyed the conversation. So one of the questions we ask is if you can go back in time, say 20 years to talk to the young Iris, what advice would you give her?

Iris Harel:

That’s a good one. I can tell you what I… So I was asked about this question I think a couple of years ago, and I tell you what I said then. I like a slogan. So I told them that if I had to give advice to Iris when she was 16, I would say that witty is the new pretty. You can understand, you know what I mean by that. I think it’s really important to make sure that you constantly learn. You keep yourself very up to speed. You challenge yourself. You make sure that you always evolving. I think beautiful minds are the most significant thing in a human being.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I love that. That’s Great.

Iris Harel:

And you need to be kind. This is one thing that I always say to my kids. Always, always be kind.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Agreed. Good advice. Iris, thank you for joining us. How can our listeners learn more about you and the work that you’re doing?

Iris Harel:

So everybody can connect through LinkedIn. They are more than welcome to read my blog on the Amdocs website and some of the articles that I publish are on LinkedIn as well. I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Great. I hope everybody takes the opportunity to reach out and take you over on that invitation. So this is going to wrap up our episode of the Broadband Bunch. I want to thank you for listening and if you’ve made it this far, probably geeking out about broadband like Iris and I are. So if you get a chance, go to broadbandbunch.com for more episodes, lots of different resources for you to check out and hopefully an invitation for anybody to share their stories. We’d love to add you to our show. So thanks for your time.

Iris Harel:

Thank you very much, Pete. It was great.