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Provisioning Problems

During this process, several problems can occur. Firstly, the ISP and the telephone company might not communicate perfectly. Secondly, the telephone company may have difficulty determining whether the connection is running properly. Thirdly, the technician who arrives to configure the subscriber's PC may not have the required knowledge. These problems cost money (from £200 to £500 per home) and increase customer dissatisfaction.

Not surprisingly, providers are looking for methods of reducing the cost of provisioning. One method is automated installation, which enables a less-skilled technician to configure the PC.

A second method is self-installation where the provider packages a cable modem, CDs, and a few cables and the subscriber takes the package home and configures his PC in a few minutes.

Retention and Revenue Growth

However, the real sources of ROI are customer retention and revenue growth. In other words, the big service challenge comes after the provisioning problem has been rectified.

And how is the industry dealing with this? Not very well at all. Customer dissatisfaction typically begins with provisioning and continues from there. In fact, some analysts estimate that about half of the customers are dissatisfied with their installation experience.

The customer tends to find the ensuing service and support frustrating, because most providers currently rely on the classic Helpdesk model with telephone, email or, sometimes, chat. These methods absolutely cannot keep up with the industry's growth. On the telephone, hold time can exceed one hour. Passing callers to and from ISP to DLEC to ILEC exacerbates frustration and 'customer churn' rates are 15 per cent and climbing.

Providers need to retain subscribers long enough to make a profit - usually several years. The key differentiator that retains subscribers is superior service, as the industry is now painfully learning.

Best Practices

There are four "best practices" that can create and manage the superior customer experience: Firstly, be able to handle both technical problems and non-technical problems such as billing queries. Secondly, be able to help the subscriber when the network connection is broken. The connection can break because (a) the network is down; or (b) the subscriber has installed new hardware or software, and, for example, during its installation Windows broke the connection.

The service and support solution needs to be able to satisfy the subscriber without talking to the back end. The solution must truly satisfy, not just deflect; for example, if the solution simply rolls back the subscriber's PC, the subscriber cannot use his new hardware or software - resulting in at least one more call.

Thirdly, be able to fix problems faster. Subscribers aren't interested in what the technicians or analysts are doing; they just want fast resolution.

Fourthly, be able to avoid calls when small things go down on your network. For example, if a local email server goes down, a good solution is to proactively alert subscribers that the server is down and promise to send a second alert when it's back up.

Choosing a Solution

A long-term solution must be scalable, to keep up with rapid growth, and flexible, to keep up with change. For example, as your basic access fees shrink because of competition, you may be offering value-added services such as online games and productivity applications. Your solution must be able to handle these new services - it can't be just a utility that addresses today's problem.

This is why Motive has developed a long-term vision for customer care, to help end-users from pre-qualification, through automated install, through ongoing service and support for customer retention and growth. Motive's vision, in very brief summary, is this:

•Provide a single point of service. For example, don't force the customer to abandon the application and pick up the telephone or send email. Don't expect the customer to diagnose his own problem or search for the appropriate path to service.
•Make it easy to get help. If self-service cannot solve the customer's problem, the customer should be able to escalate to a live analyst with one click - and the entire history of the incident should be forwarded to the analyst automatically.
•Be able to tie several call centres together, in order to share expertise and eliminate the 'pass-the-parcel' chain. Involve everyone: ISPs, transport providers, and other content or application providers.
• Provide "customer-powered" service. Bring service to the customer, not vice versa. Integrate service throughout the entire customer experience; make it seem like part of the application. Your service network should be optimised for serving the customer effectively, not just making your Helpdesk more efficient.

How to Get Started

Here are a few tips gathered from the experiences of some of our most successful customers to ensure continued added-value for end-users:

• Don't dive into a long deployment cycle that won't produce some immediate cost reductions or revenue increases. Focus on today's most painful problem first. Solve it, demonstrate the value, and go on to the next problem.

• Lay down a plan that will deliver new benefits continually. The sequence might be: automated installation; basic support content; alerts; assisted service; self-service; and integration with CRM, network management tools, and provisioning tools.

• And finally, extend support to non-technical problems