So the winter months have passed us by and we’re now (potentially) nearing the summer time. I often have to wonder if spring even exists in the UK anymore! Anyway I digress, so onto the purpose of my post…
As some of you may be aware, we carry out a Broadband Faults Survey every quarter to find out how we’re performing in the world of Faults. Everything from how we understand the fault, the speed at which we respond, the type of faults we’re dealing with and even if we’re making you aware of certain features such as the free 0808 dial-up number and SMS text messaging services.
Each quarter we look at the results to find out how we have performed in each area. We then use these findings to create plans for improvement and compare performance with that of the previous quarters. In the past, these surveys have also led to the introduction of new features like out dedicated Faults team and the 2-way SMS tool.
So without further ado, let’s get the barrel rolling and show you how we’ve done compared to last quarter’s results. Have we improved? Have we got worse? What can we do to make sure we improve for next quarter, and how are we going to make sure this happens? All these questions will be answered throughout the blog but I’ll be taking questions again at the end if there are any takers!
Last quarter's results: Of the customers who completed the survey after their broadband fault was resolved:-
- 58% Were not aware that we can offer an SMS text update to their fault.
- 36% Were not aware of the 0808 free dial-up connection we offer as a backup when a fault is raised.
- 74% Rated the experience as above average.
- 57% Were extremely, or very satisfied with the experience.
- 25% Felt that we did not understand their problem very well.
This compares to this quarter's results as follows. Of the customers who completed the survey after their broadband fault was resolved:-
- 67% Were not aware that we can offer an SMS text update to their fault.
- 31% Were not aware of the 0808 free dial-up connection we offer as a backup when a fault is raised.
- 75% Rated the experience as above average.
- 56% Were extremely, or very satisfied with the experience.
- 25% Felt that we did not understand their problem very well.
The first thing that probably jumps out at you is the increase in customers not being aware of our SMS functionality once a fault has been raised to us. It’s worth noting at this point that we added extra functionality to this service on 27th March and since then, there’s been a drive to increase awareness. If we look at the results from the 27th March until now then we can see that:
- 61% Were not aware that we can offer an SMS text update to their fault.
As you can see, the percentage has decreased by 6% which shows that we are gradually making customers more aware of our SMS messaging service. Having said that, this is still a 3% increase from last quarter. As the current survey will run from now until next quarter, we are expecting this figure to decrease further and hopefully drop below the previous quarter’s result of 58%. Ideally we would like this to be under 10% but we will see how much we can do in 3 months 
Last time, we saw that customers raising faults online had dropped to 48%, well this quarter it has now fallen to 42% which shows that more customers are raising faults over the phone. We would like to know your personal opinions regarding this. Is it due to more customers actually not being able to get online from any location to raise the fault? Is the Broadband Fault Checker too hard and complex to follow? Is the first instinct to call the CSC? Please let us know and we will try and improve if we can. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to fill out the fault checker online and therefore go through it at their own pace.
Going back to the last survey again, we did implement a system where customers were called on every contact of a fault. Whilst this did increase customer awareness, we felt that customers were getting increasingly annoyed when there was no update, or a pointless update. This also increased the amount of time we were spending on each fault hence getting a bit behind with the volume of faults awaiting action. To improve this, we started the SMS 2 project as stated earlier. Don’t worry we’ll still be calling customers as much as possible but now we also have the SMS option where customers can return an update without having to physically call us. Instead, all they need to do is reply via text message to the SMS updates we send to their phone.
Understanding faults is still the main worry for our customers and thus we have created a dedicated Broadband Faults Team where we have core members who deal with faults on a daily basis. This allows the team members to really develop their knowledge and skill in this area which should enhance the customer experience - in the two weeks since it started, we have seen the oldest untouched ticket statistics improve by a lot. It is also a great team to work on - no tea disagreements here! 
Following on from this, we are having two technical agents work a one month secondment with the Faults team. This will increase the knowledge of the agents and also assist the Faults team with regards to keeping fault volumes low. The agents will be on a rotational basis so they will go back to their Technical team at the end of their month to give other agents a chance to improve their knowledge in the area.
There are a number of other areas that we’re looking to improve following the results from this survey. These are listed below.
- Continuation to push awareness of SMS for fault handling and 2-way messaging service that customers can use instead of calling the CSC
- Improvement of the Broadband Fault Checker experience and to also improve the way that automated text is applied in order to improve understanding of the process
- Improve the understanding of the faults process by making customers aware of why we ask them to check their equipment and wiring before raising a fault to our supplier
Well, that's the end of this blog. The current survey has been live from May 29th and we will see how this quarter goes in late August. Any questions, please leave a comment. Thanks.