The New Social Conversation Experience

With the rise of social media and extended outlets for individuals to share their personal thoughts, product desires and displeasures with a company’s service, understanding and leveraging the social conversation has become a priority. From a customer intimacy perspective, for example, consumers no longer rely on just voice calls for their C2B interactions. Multimedia and social media have become critical elements of the overall conversation experience between end users whether they be at work or at home. 

A recent Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) piece, From Rich Communications to Social Communications, highlights the shift to the new social conversation experience. It points out that service providers (SPs) seeking to capitalize on the shift to social communication must be able to empower enterprises and mass market customers to connect, share and organize information in a manner that provides enhanced interactions with a secure environment. It demonstrates how working with Alcatel-Lucent and their IMS solutions, service providers are better prepared to accommodate and prosper from the conversation shift. 

What it will take 

As part of the focus on the move to all IP networks, service providers must concentrate on extending to subscribers the better quality and more compelling social conversation experience such a move engenders. The ultimate goal is to captivate customers. This means not just end users but helping enterprises delight their customers as well.

To this end, capabilities offered by Alcatel-Lucent in its Social Communication Release 6.1 are based on the GSMA (News - Alert) Rich Communications (RCS and RCS-e) recommendations. The differentiating capabilities within this platform allow for social communications that are easier, more social, integrated and relevant to the individual user. 

The good news is that now is the time for SPs to move to facilitate the new social conversation. Much of the network infrastructure required is or soon will be in place. And, as we are all aware, the explosion of smartphones and tablets and all of the apps they are running is transforming every aspect of how we interact with each other in our various personal and professional personae. 

The industry also knows that simply making a connection is no longer acceptable. Users expect their communication services to be intuitive, social, seamless, secure and enhanced.   

Alcatel-Lucent enhances the conversation

How Alcatel-Lucent is supporting the shift to the new era of improved social communications is via the:

• Alcatel-Lucent Presence server/XDM Server (PS/XDMS) — aggregates and delivers real-time presence information to support user availability, social presence and service capability across all networks.
• Alcatel-Lucent Multimedia Instant Messaging (MMIM) — offers operators a full-featured, presence-enabled chat system to support real-time connections that support RCS-e specifications for JOYN service launch.
• Alcatel-Lucent Unified Message Center (UMC), which includes an IP Short Message Gateway — enables the IP short messaging gateway to allow SMS delivery over IMS/LTE (News - Alert).

In short, the new social conversation experience as enabled by Alcatel-Lucent’s comprehensive portfolio of solutions gives SPs the ability to offer differentiated services quickly to the market particularly when used with the company’s IMS capabilities. It is time for SPs to get more social. It starts with improving the conversation with stakeholders, particularly with more intimate engagement with customers not matter who or where they may be.