Telecom Audit Techniques:
Observational and Personal Surveys
One
of the most useful tools for helping you
to conduct a successful audit of your
telecommunications services is the "survey".
Surveys
come in two categories:
-
Observation
Surveys
-
Surveys
via Personal Interviews
Each
plays an important role in helping you to obtain the most
reliable information possible and to uncover the maximum
amount of savings throughout your telecom audit.
Why Do Surveys?
Imagine
a detective attempting to solve a high-profile case successfully
- and never interviewing any witnesses or personally visiting
the scene of the crime! It would never happen (and certainly
make for bad crime TV!).
Remote
and/or on-premises observation and interview surveys are
critical to the information gathering and hypotheses testing
processes. Surveys are the "glue" that helps
all the hard data you've collected come together.
Surveying
Through Observation
On-premises
and remote observation can uncover problems in many areas.
It is best to focus your efforts on one or more of the
following items:
-
Central
Office Circuits and Related Items - identify all
circuits that are brought to the premises. The demarc
is the natural point to observe. Be sure the demarc
is properly labeled. If the demarc is not labeled, you
will need to determine if there are other circuits entering
the premises via non-centralized locations.
-
Equipment
and Maintenance - identify terminals and other billed
items. You may have to complete a census of relevant
items in and about the common equipment area.
-
Layout
and Usage - locate equipment/departments/functions
to suggest or support possible and reasonable changes
in provisioning, such as sharing of a line for a FAX
or PC. You can also gather relevant traffic data observing
and tracking attendant call handling, or observing signal-light
activity on trunk circuit packs.
For
remote observation, look at carrier and maintenance provisioning
items such as service charges and white and yellow pages
directory listings and ads.
Specifics of Personal Interview Surveys
Aside
from billing records and customer service records, personally
surveying the users of your telecom services may be the
single most critical and beneficial method of gathering
the information you need to complete a successful audit.
At TelCon
Associates, we've used a system for on-site and remote
interviews that has been very successful and worked well
for many years.
The
content of your interviewed surveys can be as simple or
as complex as you would like to make them.
However
long or short, your interview surveys should at least
consist of and include the following items:
-
General
Data about the user such as name, position in the company,
address of phone and type of business at the surveyed
location (ex. sales, administration, retail outlet,
etc.)
-
Verify
all the services you have found as billed to each location.
It is important that you ask the user open ended questions
that illicit an informative response and not a "yes
or no" response. For example, "how many lines
do you have at this location?" will give you more
precise information for verifying lines and services
than simply saying "do you have 5 lines at this
location?".
-
Verify
all the features you have found billed to the interviewed
location. Ask the user about every feature that is being
billed, how it is used and if it is needed. This verification
process with the end user can turn up abuses of pay-per-use
features such as call-return or repeat-dial. If abuse
is present, it will most certainly be apparent during
this line of questioning.
-
An
estimate of in-bound and out-bound calling can be beneficial
for determining the correct choice of local service
options used at the location. Additionally, you may
choose to ask the user about percentages of outbound
local vs. long-distance calls made. This kind of information
can assist you later in choosing correct local and long-distance
plans to suit the needs of each specific location.
-
Percentage
of time all lines are busy at one time helps identify
obvious over provisioning. If a small percentage of
lines are busy at one time, you can be fairly certain
that over provisioning is present.
Hours of operation and number of staff is useful information
for analyzing certain hypotheses such as long-distance
options or alternate answering issues.
Surveys,
whether conducted in person or over the phone, should
be considered an integral part of any successful telecom
audit. Get started today developing your telecom survey
strategy!
or simply...
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