AT&T Labs relies on strong partnerships within AT&T to continually improve the systems that underpin AT&T services. You have seen the results of our work in innovative fraud management systems, network visualization capabilities, and Web-based customer servicing tools. Our goal is to simplify and enhance the operational processes in order to reduce costs and improve your experience while using AT&T products and services.

Improving the Customer Experience

For AT&T Labs, e-servicing means bringing the best of new technologies to our operational processes in order to ensure that the AT&T customer experience is as stellar as the performance of our networks and services. By continuing to innovate, we improve processes involved in the rapid delivery of new and existing services, dramatically reduce operational costs; and ensure flexibility in our network so that we can provide on demand service.

A few examples of where we are focusing our operational efforts:

• We are continuing to develop capabilities that enable an automated flow-through of customer service, from ordering to provisioning, and from billing to continued maintenance.
• We are developing systems that deliver the flexibility and control you need to manage your business.
• We have an entire unit dedicated to the enhancement of customer relationship management systems, designed to bring new technologies and process improvements to bear on our customer support systems. Our goal is nothing short of the industry's strongest and best customer relationships.

Streamlining and Automating Operations

Behind the scenes, we already have implemented our Concept of One^SM : the migration of multiple operational structures across AT&T into a unified, shared system. We are evolving the systems that support our work centers into a modular structure, characterized by a high level of automation, exception-based defect resolution, and a layered logical management. We are now further streamlining our operations by automating the procedures supporting our services.

Towards this goal:

• We are developing a platform that offers a single operational view of all interactions with AT&T customers to ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction.
• We are automating our maintenance processes for IP, data, and voice services to reduce costs, while maintaining a high level of service delivery
• Our software experts are developing new tools for integrating our various order management and inventory systems to more efficiently match AT&T's extensive service portfolio to the needs of AT&T customers.