Quality of Experience

Quality of experience (QoE), some times also known as quality of user experience, is a subjective measure of a customer's experiences with a service (web browsing, phone call, TV broadcast, call to a Call Center). Quality of Experience systems will try to measure metrics that customer will directly perceive as a quality parameter (in example : time for a new channel to be played when changing channel on TV). It 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?"

It is related to but differs from Quality of Service (QoS), which attempts to objectively measure the service delivered by the vendor, with QoS measurement is most of the time not related to customer, but to media (customers will never tell you : the jitter is too high). It is tied closely to the black and white of a contract and measures how well the vendor lives up to its end of the bargain. As to the relationship between QoS and QoE and the application of QoE in Communications Ecosystem see jucs.org.

A vendor/purveyor may be living up to the terms of a contract's language, thus rating high in QoS, but, the users may be very unhappy, thus causing a low QoE. Conversely, the users may be very happy with a product or a vendor, resulting in an artificially high QoE if the vendor is not, in fact, doing what he was paid to do, thus rating low in QoS.

In medical terminology QoE is also known as "Quality of Patient Experience," and is a subjective measure of a patient's experiences with a medical practice. It looks at a care provider's offering from the standpoint of the patient's holistic experience, and asks, "How did patient fare after the treatment was concluded over an extended period of time? Did they enjoy a higher, similar, or lower quality of life after the treatment? For how long? How did this patient's quality of life, post-treatment compare with other patients who received similar treatment" And then asks, "What changes need to be made to the treatment to enhance the patient's quality of life?"

QoE in the context of telecommunications networks (here more recently also abbreviated as QoX) is a purely subjective measure from the user’s perspective of the overall value of the service provided. That is to mean, QoE cannot be taken a simply the effective quality of the service but must also take into consideration every factor that contributes to overall user value such as suitableness, flexibility, mobility, security, cost, personalization and choice.

Apart from its being user dependent, it will invariably be influenced by the user’s terminal device (for example Low Definition or High Definition TV), his environment (in the car or at home), his expectations (cellular or corded telephone), the nature of the content and its importance (a simple yes/no message or an orchestral concert). Mean Opinion Score (MOS) used for assessing the quality of telephone connections is a limited form of QoE measurement process, relating to a specific media type, in a controlled environment and without specific user expectations. MOS has been expanded to assess the quality of television over ADSL (IPTV), by judging jittering, blockiness and artefacts of a viewed video signal.

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.

The only way to know how customers see your business is to look at it through their eyes.

— Daniel R. Scoggin