1. Introduction
Customer support is a significant issue for any
broadband service provider. With an ever-widening
range of services being provided over broadband
connections, to an increasingly diverse range of people,
providing excellent customer support in a cost-effective
way is becoming more and more difficult.
Excellent customer support is a critical factor in
overall customer satisfaction, and hence loyalty, and is
recognised as a significant enabler to growing market
share in a highly competitive market.
This paper starts by discussing broadband customer
support. It demonstrates why change is necessary in the
way this support is provided, if a profitable service with
high levels of customer loyalty is to be achieved.
The paper then discusses (in section 3) how applying
an end-to-end methodology to the complete customer
experience — from when the problem first occurs right
through to when the customer is happy that a
permanent resolution has been achieved — enables
service providers to identify the key support capabilities
that are required in order to deliver an excellent
customer experience.
Finally, a number of innovative ways in which these
key capabilities can be realised, in a cost-effective way,
are identified (section 4). Some of these are already
being adopted by service providers, whereas others are
still in the research stage.
2. Mass-market broadband service support
2.1 The need for change in how broadband is
supported
There are a number of significant factors coming into
play that will, if nothing is done to change the way in
which broadband customer support is delivered, cause
significant problems for both service providers and their
customers. These include:
• broadband is appealing to a wider range of people,
an increasing percentage of whom have limited
technical skills and abilities,
• the complexity and variety of the technology
connected to the broadband service in the
customer’s premises is increasing rapidly (as an
illustration, 13% of PC owners now have a home
network, with 5% of PC owners having a wireless
network),
• the range of services delivered over broadband is
increasing, including ‘always-on’ services such as
home security,
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118 BT Technology Journal • Vol 24 No 1 • January 2006
• customers are becoming increasingly reliant on
their broadband service, e.g. businesses using it for
VPNs,
• DSL-delivered broadband speeds are running ever
closer to the maximum the physical line can
support, due both to the higher speeds being
offered by service providers, and to the increase in
the number of DSL circuits in each cable.
The following two case studies describe real-life
examples that illustrate well some of the issues
mentioned above, and provide further insight into how
difficult it can be for customers to use broadband
services, and how this will drive the need for change in
how those services are supported.
• Case study 1 — ‘Surely using microfilters is simple
enough?’
Broadband customer: ‘My broadband connection
works downstairs but not in the bedroom.’
Customer’s friend: ‘Describe the connection from the
master socket.’
Broadband Customer: ‘Which one is the master
socket?’
Customer’s friend: ‘Follow the wiring from outside
and the socket nearest where the wire enters the house
is the master socket.’
Broadband customer: ‘OK there is a phone doubler,
one of the sockets has my phone in and the other goes
upstairs.’
Customer’s friend: ‘What’s plugged in upstairs?’
Broadband customer: ‘The computer is plugged into
a thing with ‘microfilter’ written on it and then into the
extension line.’
There then follows a long and fruitless discussion
about is the PC on, did it ever work, is the modem
light on, are there any other phones plugged in
other sockets with microfilters, etc, none of which
point to the problem.
Customer’s friend: ‘O.K. let’s start again, unplug the
doubler from the master socket.’
Broadband customer: ‘The doubler has got ‘ADSL
microfilter’ written on it. Is that important...’
The customer had a microfilter in the master socket
and had run an extension line upstairs plugged in
the 'phone' section of the microfilter, i.e. the
broadband signal was already filtered out by the
time it reached the PC...
• Case study 2 — ‘Wireless networks set themselves
up nowadays, don’t they?’
A broadband user was trying to get their Centrino
laptop to connect to their wireless router/hub. The
WEP key was written on the underside of their
Netgear DG834G. No matter how many times they
tried, they could not get the laptop to connect.
Several days and many attempts later a friend of
theirs noticed that the wireless network name that
the Centrino laptop could see was ‘linksys’.
Thinking it a bit unusual that a Netgear box would
publish a network name of ‘linksys’, further
investigation led them to see that the Netgear box
did not have the wireless turned on and he had
been trying to access his neighbour’s network!
If the neighbour had had the same make of hub,
then would this broadband user ever have
diagnosed the problem? A frightening statistic is
that 30% of home networking kit that is returned as
faulty is not faulty at all — the customer just could
not get it to work.
There are five key issues highlighted by these case
studies.
• Not all customers understand how broadband is
delivered (e.g. what an ADSL microfilter is), and
indeed why should they have to? Service providers
and consumer equipment vendors still assume too
much knowledge on the part of the customer in the
design of their products. The fact that 30% of
perfectly good products are returned as ‘faulty’
illustrates this.
• It is very difficult for support organisations to know
what questions to ask when trying to diagnose the
customer’s problem, even when the person
providing the support has the necessary technical
expertise.
• Customers can, and do, give incorrect information
to the person on the other end of the telephone.
This may be unwittingly, or deliberately, and can
lead to a lengthy, and ultimately fruitless,
diagnostic activity.
• There are an increasing number of examples of ‘it
does not work’ problems being experienced by
broadband customers, and they are becoming ever
harder for the support organisations to diagnose. It
is a real challenge to provide the support people,
e.g. technical help desks, with sufficient knowledge
and expertise.
• Just diagnosing the problem may not be enough —
it is often necessary to explain to the end user what
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BT Technology Journal • Vol 24 No 1 • January 2006 119
they need to do in order to resolve the problem.
This can involve language (such as ‘DHCP’) which is
totally foreign to the end user.
It is clear, from all the issues identified above, that
customers are likely to need help and support from their
service providers more often (support call volumes will
rise), and the complexity of their problems will increase
(each call will take longer to resolve). The combined
effects of these two things will be very damaging to the
overall profitability of the service. This point is brought
sharply into focus by this observation made by one
major broadband service provider: ‘A one-hour call to
the technical help desk can eliminate the profit for that
circuit for an entire year.’
2.2 Why do customers seek help?
Requests for support can originate for a number of
different reasons. Examples are ISP faults, wholesale
broadband provider faults, cries for help (‘I cannot get it
to work’), calls relating to issues with another
company’s service (e.g. a content provider), customer
equipment faults, and intermittent faults.
A recent sample of helpdesk calls highlighting the
top three reasons for a support call is shown in Table 1.
2.3 Who should the customer contact?
For any broadband-based service that a customer is
using, there can be many different companies involved.
When the customer needs support, who should they
contact?
This problem is illustrated well by the example
shown in Fig 1. It shows a customer making a VoIP call
to a mobile telephone, and the various companies that
could be involved in delivering that call. If the call does
not work as expected, who does the user contact for
support? Potentially it could be any of the companies in
the chain.
Even for this fairly simple example — making a
telephone call — there are seven different organisations
involved, four of which could be the correct organisation
for the customer to contact in order to resolve the
problem.
The key issue here is understanding how customers
decide which organisation to contact, given that they
may have little or no knowledge about how the service is
provided. It also highlights the need for support
organisations to be able to establish quickly if they are
the correct organisation to deal with the user’s problem,
and have effective processes in place to handle the
situation when they are not.
2.4 Broadband support — summary
Section 2 has discussed broadband customer support. It
is apparent that users of broadband services will require
increasing levels of support. It is also apparent that the
complexity involved in providing this support will
increase rapidly as both volumes, and the range of
services offered, increase in the coming months.
Any service provider who wishes to deliver an
excellent customer service, while at the same time
remaining profitable, needs to be taking steps to ensure
their support capability is up to the task.
Section 3 discusses how they might set about doing
this The starting point is understanding the end
customer’s experience and the business functions that
are involved in delivering it.
Fig 1 VoIP to mobile call.
Skype
phone
Netgear
hub
DSL provider
DSLAM
Internet
PSTN
gateway
mobile
provider
mobile
telephone
ISP
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3. Taking an ‘e