Customer Satisfaction: Results from March 2008

[#1]

The purpose of the Customer Feedback Survey is to facilitate a better understanding of what our customers think of the service they receive from the Customer Support Centre (CSC). Customer feedback will be utilised to identify areas for improvement within the department, it also provides a feedback mechanism on the performance of individual agents. 8194 surveys have been submitted (via email) to PlusNet customers that have called the CSC. 2.9% of the surveys were completed which represents a sample size of 0.6% of all customers that have had telephone contact with a CSC agent last month. It is important to highlight these statistics in order to allow the data presented within this report to be taken in context. Although the results gathered from the survey are a random sample of customers that have spoken to a CSC agent, the results do represent a very small sample of the total calls handled within the CSC during the month. The graphs below represent a selection of the questions asked to the customers to demonstrate the differing types of feedback we receive each month. The first graph shows the type of queries our support team deal with on a daily basis. As normal the most common type of call are regarding technical queries or fault updates. This month has seen a significant increase in the number of sales calls coming in, which is obviously good news.   The wait time is shown in detail on the next graph. The number of customers waiting more than 10 minutes for their call to be answered has decreased by 50% from last month. The majority of customers are still having their call answered in under 3 minutes, with over 85% having their call answered in under 5 minutes.   Different customers have different knowledge levels, therefore it is important that we adjust our approach to ensure we can help each person as much as possible. Last month this figure had increased to 93% from 91% the previous month, I'm happy to say that this has again increased up to 94.5%.   If you have a problem with your connection or services you want the person helping you to understand the frustration this can cause. This is why we encourage our agents to empathise with customers on the phone. This has also shown an increase for the second month in a row, up from 70% to 75% and now to 77%.   It’s equally important that our agents know what they are talking about and are confident in doing so. For the second month in a row the amount of customers stating the agent was extremely or very satisfied was 80%.   We ask customer to rate the overall performance of the agent they spoke to, on the whole this is very high but there is always room for improvement. The QoS and training in the CSC is paying off, as the amount of customers rating the agent’s performance as very or extremely satisfied has increased by from 71% two months ago up to 77.5% now.   Now comes one of the most important graphs on the survey, the overall satisfaction level. Last month you may remember that this was a new high of 67.1%, well I'm delighted to announce that this month we've not only hit a new record high for satisfaction of 72.5%, but also a new low for dissatisfaction of 5.9%.   I hope you enjoyed reading this and I look forward to next months survey. Chris.

[#2]

Why arn't ticket responses monitored in the same way?

[#3]

My dealings with plusnet this year left a very different feeling, from being a happy customer i found when things go wrong and it is not a standard 2 minute quick easy to fix fault the call centre staff were found sadly lacking and showed no mental agility of flexabilty from the standards scripts. A lot more work is needing done when it comes to difficult issue and how to find a solution. I had previously recommeded plusnet to other but it is true the sign of a good company is what they do when things go wrong and in my case Plusnet were found sadly lacking.

[#4]

@James IIRC you asked a similar question on last months survey, I'll paste my answer in below for you. The questions are structured to ascertain how the agent performed on the phone, some of the questions would be irrelevant for ticket responses. When customers close the ticket after the issue is resolved they can rate the response and add comments if required, these are picked up and checked for quality to ensure that any poor rated tickets are improved in future. @Steve Sorry to hear that you had a poor experience with our support team, the calls are monitored frequently to ensure customers are receiving the best support they can. We don't use scripts, however in certain cases (such as fault troubleshooting) there are standard tests required before we can raise a fault to BT. If you'd like to PM me the username of the account in question and let me know what the issue was that we couldn't resolve I'd be more than happy to look into this for you. Alternatively if you aren't a member on the forums yet if you could paste a ticket number from your account in reply to this comment I'll pick this up.

[#5]

I agree with Steve Masson that the technical response leaves much to be desired. In my situation,where speed issues are concerned, Plusnet detach themselves from any resonsibility of account ownership and blame the local BT exchange.They say they are unable to influence BT, cannot give me a date when an issue will be resolved and l am left with a downstream of 576kbps from an original 5Mbps. Oh! l forget, BT own Plusnet....sorry guys your figures and graphs mean nothing and l'm damn sure l'm not a lonely voice of dissension

[#6]

@Mike Speed faults can be tricky to pin down, there can be a number of factors involved. The figure of 576kpbs, is that the throughput you are seeing or the sync speed? I'd be happy to look into this issue for you, can you let me know a ticket number from your account and I'll investigate. It might also be worth having a read of Jameseh's speed fault blog which gives some fantastic information on the problems encountered:- http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/07/02/broadband-speed-faults-how-to-diagnose/

[#7]

Mike and Steve are not the only ones. I have a ticket raised 15 April and still outstanding. It has been going round in circles and I am becoming increasingly frustrated. In a recent instalment your representative asked me to disconnect my telephone and plug the modem directly into the engineer's socket so that he could run a test on the connection. I really thought that finally I was getting somewhere. But after 3 days of waiting for this test to be carried out, I finally got a message that my connection was much better, but there was no indication that any test had been carried out. The connection did in fact get better, but only for a few hours! It appears that support staff do not read previous entries in the question log, and will grasp at any straw to be able to suggest that the problem might have just gone away - presumably on of its own accord. Up until this I had been very impressed with PlusNet for your honesty, openness, and for treating customers as intelligent adults. Unfortunately that impression has been completely wiped away. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the most critical test of any ISP is how well it resolves faults. Sadly for me, PlusNet is currently failing very badly.

[#8]

That really doesn't sound fantastic so far Ian, I'll get one of our dedicated faults analysts on the case for you. As per my reply to Mike previously, speed faults can be hard to diagnose and resolve, especially with the wholesale design of MaxDSL. I've had a quick look over your account and it appears that your line is fluctuating between 1 and 2Mb. This appears to be the current limit on your line unfortunately.

[#9]

Chris, I appreciate it. I had a helpful response from James Bailey today who has promised to get a line test done.

[#10]

It is good to read the comments I agree with James, it is a little worrying that the tickets are not part of the survey. Ticket response time is much better now. The sample of calls is so low I am not sure how relevant the results can be. I must be the unlucky small percentage but everytime I contact support by ticket I get lax responses like they don't care about support. They do not know their product. As time has gone on I have tried to phrase my questions very clearly and provided Plusnet site references but still they don't read, don't care and don't have the knowledge to answer questions. The next phase is really annoying. You respond and say please check your response and please read the question. Sometimes they reply with the same answer - der!! After several attempts at this I try and escalate the question to the intelligent next tier or management. This is not done, they refuse to pass it up. I start a new ticket as a direct complaint to management and the idiot who couldn't care the first few times answers the question - what!!! The ticket eventually gets answered but it is hard work. My impression is that support staff are unsure of referals and the phone option. Any question in this area seems to cause a problem. I think the support is better by phone as the dialogue to a result is quicker. Perhaps you should introduce a system that gives a free months service when support fail to answer questions adequately after the customer has tried 3 times. This will be a very visable and painful measure of quality. I would be enjoying a free connection if that were the case. I know you are trying but more effort is required. I think it is an attitude issue. It is too easy to get rid of a question rather than answer it. I think Plusnet is a great product let down by its support. The Member centre should win awardsfor design and great access to your account. The bad news is I can see where the problem is but the support staff don't understand their product. If I could put it right myself I would, it would be quicker. I have to train the support staff so they know where to look and then fix it. I don't think I should have to do this. More pride in your work is required by the support staff.

[#11]

Hi there, I'm the Operations Manager in the CSC. We look at both written and verbal support that we provide for quality purposes. Currently the survey does only go out for calls in, however we are looking at adding tickets, although this will probably not be until the start of next year. We currently have the "Smiley Face" reporting on tickets. This is where customers rate their response with a happy, unhappy or neutral face. We look at the unhappy report on a daily basis. All training needs are identified and our quality team or the manager themselves will educate the respective analyst or the department if needs be. One of my managers is finalising a blog on ticket response times and ticket pools, this should be out in the next few days. If you have any specific examples of recent tickets with bad responses I will happily look at them if you email them to me or the Comms Team.