By maintaining Nortel CS1000 after end-of-service-life many organizations will achieve cost savings, but they will have to wrestle some massive security, resiliency and customer experience questions.
This is the third in a series of blogs that look at the big CS1000 lifecycle management challenges. It asks if organizations see the big picture economics of continuing with Nortel CS1000 or are just blinded by dollar savings – and poses a coping strategy.
The cost/benefit equation is still stacked in favor of Nortel CS1000: performance continues unabated and the lifetime value is only getting stronger the longer the technology endures in the voice environment.
Add the fact that maintenance is low, continued support is acceptable and a big investment cost is unnecessary, then CS1000 could be seen as the definitive cash cow.
But is this a genuine corporate upside or a false economy?
There are many elements to bake into any cost/benefit, from security and operational risks to business agility, but one critical business metric to factor into the financials is the impact of aging legacy technology on customer service experience and revenues.
The truth is that CS1000 can’t support the latest CX technologies that organizations must increasingly adopt to satisfy the constantly changing demands of their customers, like self-service and personalization.
Another customer demand is seamless service, yet CS1000 is a disparate system that can’t contribute to a single truth.
Then there is the impact of the increased outages and slower remediation speeds on the quality of customer delivery.
Is there an answer?
See Nortel CS1000 through the customer’s eyes and not just a technology lens
The logic says don’t stop at an assessment of the security and operational risks, look at the risks to the customer experience and the business impact. That way you’ll get a complete picture of the commercial value of continuing with Nortel CS1000.
Here are some thoughts on a CX audit:
- Don’t shorthand or be subjective, look at all the customer touchpoints and customer impacts of the voice environment. Where possible measure and quantify this.
- Go beyond the voice environment to the voice of the environment. Talk to key management, operations staff and front line agents.
- Overlay any relevant insights from voice of the customer studies and journey mapping exercises.
- Prioritize the critical risks the voice environment poses to customer delivery and unearth the critical single points of failure.
- Revisit the assessment of the greatest threats of technology failures and quantify their impact on customers.
- Combine the operational, security and business risks with the CX risks and take a complete view of the ongoing commercial viability of Nortel CS1000.
A parting thought: the CX limitations of CS1000 could cost businesses in lost customers and revenues. This could massively outweigh any cost savings from maintaining an aging technology.
Which raises a profound question: is Nortel CS1000 still delivering business value, or in truth is it a false economy?
