Quality of experience

Quality of Experience (QoE, QoX or simply QX) is a measure of a customer's experiences with a service (web browsing, phone call, TV broadcast, call to a Call Center). QX focuses on the entire service experience, and is a more holistic evaluation than the more narrowly focused user experience (focused on a software interface) and customer-support experience (support focused).

QoE looks at a vendor's or purveyor's offering from the standpoint of the customer or end user, and asks, "What mix of goods, services, and support, do you think will provide you with the perception that the total product is providing you with the experience you desired and/or expected?" It then asks, "Is this what the vendor/purveyor has actually provided?" If not, "What changes need to be made to enhance your total experience?" In short, QoE provides an assessment of human expectations, feelings, perceptions, cognition and satisfaction with respect to a particular product, service or application.

QoE is a fast emerging multidisciplinary field based on social psychology, cognitive science, economics, and engineering science, focused on understanding overall human quality requirements. QoE is the blueprint of all human quality needs and expectations. Traditionally, technology-centric approaches based on QoS parameters have been employed to ensure service quality to end users. QoE expands this horizon to capture people’s aesthetic and even hedonic needs.

QoE is a blueprint of all human subjective and objective quality needs and experiences arising from the interaction of a person with technology and with business entities in a particular context. Although QoE is perceived as subjective, it is the only measure that counts for customers of a service. Being able to measure it in a controlled manner helps operators understand what may be wrong with their services.

QoE in the context of telecommunications networks is defined as:

The degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service. It results from the fulfillment of his or her expectations with respect to the utility and / or enjoyment of the application or service in the light of the user’s personality and current state.

QoE is related to but differs from Quality of Service (QoS), which attempts to objectively measure service parameters (such as packet loss rates or average throughput). QoS measurement is most of the time not related to a customer, but to the media or network itself. QoE is a purely subjective measure from the user’s perspective of the overall quality of the service provided.

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