John Meagher

Ed Rayeski, Director, Handset & Device Support, ZTE USA, Inc.
Amy T. Augustine, Manager, Reverse Logistics, U.S. Cellular
Michael Deaton, Director, Americas Repair Operations, Microsoft
John Meagher, Director, Service Operations, Samsung Telecommunications America

Quality is a make or break function. Poor quality not only impacts return rates but also erodes trust in your brand, given that consumers talk to one another about their experiences and shape the attitudes of their peers toward your brand. Wireless OEMs and carriers face a particularly challenging quality environment. Increasingly global development makes it difficult to communicate throughout the supply chain and needed changes must be applied across a host of different programs, while being incorporated into next generation design. An added challenge is that OEMs are often receiving product feedback from carrier call centers and are one step removed from the customer. What's truly wrong with a product can often be distorted. This panel session will consider some of the principal challenges. Attendees will learn how to:

• Get closer to the customer: How can OEMs directly access their customers and identify what issues exist in the field? How can you proactively reach users (i.e. social channels - Facebook and Twitter) and provide solutions to help them?
• Overcome organizational structures that are not always set up to enable good quality follow through and responsiveness: OEMs may fix an issue with one product but the carrier's expectation is that all products to follow will contain the same fix and that's where OEMs often fall down - when they don't have a good mechanism with R&D to kill the issue across multiple programs
• Ensure the quality level of suppliers and sub-suppliers: How do you ensure the quality levels of suppliers and sub-suppliers so some simple component/assembly is not your undoing?