iCE: The 'cool' operation support system and interactive customer empowerment engine

This article looks at the marketing aspects of bringing new services to the market with a new approach to customer empowerment and it describes the structure and features of iCE, the empowerment enabler iCE, the cool. operating support system and interactive customer empowerment tool. In the new millennium a new company has to distinguish itself by either doing something unique in a niche market, get into a price war or find something that puts the whole ordering, delivery and customer relationship into a new perspective. The Dutch enterprise ipulsys started in 1998 building a portfolio of innovative IP-based services, ranging from IP transit, data VPN's and unified messaging (UM). ipulsys adopted the philosophy that all interactions with customers, suppliers and internal staff should be web-based wherever possible. To that end we developed a fully integrated Web-based tool, consisting of a range of specialised software programmes, glued together by a middleware package and with a Broadvision web front-end customer facing tool. It provides a quotation manager, an account manager, a trouble ticket manager and a billing manager. All these programmes will run via the Internet (personal computer or wireless application protocol (WAP)) with a click and go approach. It will also allow customers to communicate with ipulsys and with each other in a 'chat mode' approach. This interactive customer empowerment (iCE) platform was initially never intended as a sellable service but purely as a competitive differentiator. While entering the market with our suite of services, each supported by iCE, we found significant, industry-wide customer interest in the iCE tool as a service in itself. This has evolved so much that we now have iCE in various flavours as our main service offering, while we have the virtual private networks (VPNs) and especially UM as supporting elements to iCE. We found that customers are reluctant to outsource their services-especially in Europe-because they fear the loss of control. With ICE we are able to give customers so much empowerment, control and trust that outsourcing is no longer an issue.