Title: Improving customer experience through accurate demand forecasting

Authors: Gilbert Owusu, Mitul Shah, Christos Voudouris

Addresses: Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC), Office of Group CTO, BT PLC, Adastral Park, MLB1/pp12, Martlesham Heath, IP5 3RE, UK. ' Infosys Consulting, Infosys Technologies Ltd., Bangalore 560 100, India. ' Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC), Office of Group CTO BT PLC, Adastral Park, MLB1/pp12, Martlesham Heath, IP5 3RE, UK

Abstract: Accurate demand forecasting is critical to improving customer experience. Accurately forecasting demand ensures that organisations have full visibility of customer requests. Such proactive visibility of demand in service organisations enables the right resources to be deployed at the right place and at the right time. We discuss the challenges faced in developing a demand forecasting system for service organisations. We also discuss the application of such a system at BT PLC, one of the leading communication service providers in the world.

Keywords: service forecasting; service industry; forecasting challenges; telecom industry; customer experience; demand forecasting; communication services; BT plc.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2009.021742

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2009 Vol.4 No.1, pp.16 - 27

Published online: 01 Dec 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article