3 Ways To Gain Greater Visibility Into the Subscriber Experience

A subscriber calling the support desk with a problem probably doesn’t know (or care) if the problem is caused by their Wi-Fi or the internet. They don’t know if one of their many connected devices is causing the issue, or if there’s a local fiber cut. They have a frustrating problem and need you to fix it as fast as possible. That’s why it’s so critical for customer support teams to have visibility of all factors that impact subscriber experience.

Calix Customer Success (Customer Success) works with hundreds of broadband service providers (BSPs) to optimize their customer support operations. Here are three best practices that can help you maximize visibility of the subscriber experience—and improve against your support key performance indicators (KPIs).  

1. Make sure your entire team has access to the right tools and insights. Every customer-facing employee should have visibility into the subscriber experience. That’s why Customer Success encourages BSPs to make tools like Calix Support Cloud (Support Cloud) available across the entire service and support organization. This includes customer service, Tier 1 to Tier 3 support, as well as third-party call center support. When a subscriber calls, everyone is better prepared to resolve their problem. This is the approach Mid-Rivers Communications took, and the results were incredible. After merging their billing and customer support organizations, they made Support Cloud available to everyone. With this increased visibility, Mid-Rivers accelerated their time to resolution—resolving 90 percent of troubles within 24 hours. They also cut truck rolls by 15 percent. 
2. Gain real-time visibility from the network edge to subscriber premises. Your customer support representatives (CSRs) can’t solve—or prevent—service-affecting issues if they can’t see the entire network. Not only for network operations teams, Calix Operations Cloud also enhances Tier 1 support capabilities. It provides a real-time, end-to-end view from the access edge to the Wi-Fi systems. Personnel can react to changes in bandwidth usage, network health, and subscriber demand. They can pinpoint the source of service-affecting issues and resolve them, often before subscribers are aware.​ Fewer service outages, faster time to resolution, and reduced escalations equals happier subscribers​​.​ 
3. Take a holistic view of subscriber experience to become more proactive. What if you could instantaneously assess subscribers’ satisfaction with their experience? That’s exactly what the Subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE) Score in Support Cloud enables. This industry-first innovation gives you a holistic view of subscriber Wi-Fi and WAN health, presented in a single metric. You can take advantage of real-time and historical data to spot issues—even before subscribers become aware—and take proactive steps to address them. And now, with seven days of back data, it’s even easier for you to resolve intermittent issues or those reported after the fact. Service providers like Forked Deer Connect, LLC say the enhanced Subscriber QoE Score will enable them to identify and resolve subscriber issues more quickly. In fact, they expect they’ll reduce call handling times by 27 percent while boosting subscriber satisfaction.  

We’d love to hear other ways customers are maximizing visibility of the subscriber experience. Email me at christina.wilson@calix.com to share your best practices.  

Watch the replay of the webinar “Give Subscribers the Support They Want: Lessons from Mid-Rivers Communications” to learn how they transformed their support by gaining greater visibility into the subscriber experience.