CX in the USA: Anthony Manocchio

Recently, we decided it was about time we spent some time introducing you to the team at Telia Carrier that makes the customer experience (CX) we deliver the best in the industry.  That isn’t just our opinion, customers tell us time and time again that we are there when they need us, whether it is for advice, provisioning, or to sort out a problem.

Last month we spoke with Vera based in Russia, and today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Manocchio, who is based in our Virginia office and predominantly looks after customers across the US.

Anthony – Tell us about yourself!

“I’ve been working at Telia Carrier as part of our team of service managers since early 2018, but my career in telecoms spans 20 years!  In that time, I have worked in a range of roles from procurement through to customer provisioning and service management for a range of companies.  Working at Telia Carrier now, those experiences give me a really great perspective on the challenges that customers face.  My degree was in engineering, so I have always been interested in the technical details of why things happen.  When I am not working, I have a large family and enjoy relaxing camping holidays and doing home improvement projects.”

What have you seen change over that 20 years?

“Oh, so many things have moved on.  Obviously, the sheer speed and scale of networks today, just makes the past seem like a drop in the ocean.  But alongside that, the transparency and amount of data, that is available to both us and customers about the way their traffic and the wider network is performing is incredible, with much of it available in real-time.”

Take us through a typical day for you…

“The first thing I do is look through the ticket list to see how things need to be prioritized or whether there are outstanding tickets that perhaps a colleague has asked for my assistance with.  A good proportion of the work we do is helping customers with service performance issues and recurring problems.  One of the most interesting parts of the job is when we need to get our sleuth hats on and investigate what is happening on the network to help a customer with a ticket.  We very much see ourselves as the ‘Why?’ in the ‘Why and what is happening?’ conversation.”

“Data is a big part of how we get to understanding the why, and at Telia Carrier we are spoilt with the systems we have available to bring different data sources together from across the network, My Carrier portal and Client-Side Monitoring.  The My Carrier portal in particular means that lots of customers are able to directly view and make requests on their account.  That gives us as Service Managers to give a really great service.”

“One example of that is when one of my customers needed a much more detailed IP usage report that was broken down by their individual customers to support their own billing, rather than just an aggregated view.  Most Telco companies just would see that as the customer’s problem, but at Telia Carrier we want to make life as easy as possible for them.  For smaller companies that kind of thing makes a huge difference, as they may not have the internal resources to take advantage of our APIs.  The customer loved it and were surprised that we would take the time to do it.  It is things like this that customers value about their relationship with us.”

Data obviously matters a lot.  What do you think customers will get from the new Client-Side Monitoring tool?

“Some of our clients have extremely sensitive applications that are impacted by every network event.  Client-side monitoring is helping them and us understand those events and the relationship with the applications in more detail and more quickly.  Tickets can be generated automatically for alarms and we also have some automated troubleshooting that could take place as a result of the system.  This is an area that customer will see expand further in the future.”

What is exciting you about the future of Telco?

“Currently, I am really focused on our future at Telia Carrier.  We are at such an exciting point as we become a new company and there are many opportunities that come with that.  We’ll be getting very creative about the new services we can design for customers as well as looking at how we can build our new Network Operations Center (NOC).  And of course, the network itself will continue to grow as we work hard to maintain our number one position for the AS1299 backbone network – a position we have held since 2017.”

 What do you like the most about your work?

“It has to be the freedom and autonomy we have to do what needs to be done to help customers.  We are empowered to not only make key decisions quickly, but to question the way we do things in the business, and think about how that can be improved.  As customer service managers we have a very unique perspective on the business, and that is clearly valued by all the teams we work with.”

Learn more about CX at Telia Carrier.