Want To Achieve Service Excellence? Follow These 4 Guiding Principles

Today’s subscribers have high expectations for customer service. Tailored experiences are now the norm. Accordingly, broadband service provider (BSP) support leaders have transformed from the reactive, transactional support of the past to a more personalized, frictionless service experience. By making service excellence a key differentiator in your overall subscriber experience, you can exceed expectations—and earn loyalty for life.

We know the road to service excellence isn’t always straightforward. Calix has developed a strategic framework called the “4 Cs” to simplify the journey, built around four guiding principles: connections, competence, competition, and confidence. Distilling years of insights gleaned from our work with BSPs of all sizes through Calix Customer Success Services and Calix Business Insights Services, we have identified four key pillars that form the foundation of service excellence:

1. Create personalized connections using customer insights. Use data and insights from Calix Cloud^® to deeply understand your subscribers and how they use your services. Actively listen to cues such as family dynamics, remote working requirements, or security concerns. Whether it’s identifying a cyberbullying issue and offering Bark or proactively discussing ways to add value for a long-term subscriber, it’s about meeting the customer where they are. Take Jade Communications, a BSP focused on building deep connections with subscribers by harnessing the Calix platform, enabling their people, and optimizing their processes. Jade’s customer service representatives (CSRs)—known as “Wi-Fi wizards”—use intelligence from Calix Cloud to identify subscriber needs before recommending relevant services. This way, they’re building trust at every touchpoint.
   
   
2. Demonstrate competence in resolving issues quickly and delighting customers. Enabling CSRs to use all available tools effectively will enhance each subscriber engagement, whether that’s upgrading a service or downgrading a plan to help a customer struggling to pay their bill. And it’s empowering—not just in terms of exceeding subscriber expectations but also in helping to increase job satisfaction. Innovative new technologies demand new competencies, creating opportunities for support leaders to nurture top talent and chart longer-term career paths for CSRs. Silver Star Communications, winner of the 2023 Giant of Customer Service and Support Calix Customer Innovation Award, optimized their customer support operations, directly impacting their bottom line. Improvements in training excellence resulted in an 83 percent increase in first-call resolution and a 41 percent reduction in truck rolls.
   
   
3. Stay focused on the competition. When you understand the competitive landscape, you know subscribers have choices in your market. Start by acknowledging their decision, then thank them for choosing you as their trusted BSP. You should also know every competitor in your market. What are they offering? How does that map to your products and services? Treating your customers like family will help keep them close while providing distinctive experiences will make it harder for them to leave. The 2023 Giant of Marketing award winner, Highline Services, equipped their CSRs with extensive competitor knowledge to show their differentiated value, resulting in a 95 percent subscriber satisfaction rating and strong subscriber growth.
   
   
4. Have the confidence to deliver an excellent subscriber experience. Having confidence in your understanding of the subscriber and your service offerings is key to surpassing subscriber expectations. Trust in real-time data from Calix Cloud to inform every interaction and create personalized recommendations. Empower your CSRs to understand each service’s value—not the cost—to make the right recommendations at the right time. Tombigbee Fiber is a great example of a BSP always putting its best foot forward, relentlessly pursuing service excellence to deliver on time and above expectations. The result? A Net Promoter Score^℠ (NPS^®) score of 91—way above industry benchmarks.

Innovative BSPs leverage the 4 Cs to develop a service experience that increases subscriber satisfaction, improves operational performance, and contributes to business growth. Building meaningful subscriber relationships is your major competitive advantage against faceless Tier 1 behemoths. Make service excellence your priority and you’ll reap the rewards—becoming a giant in your market.

Discover how Calix Customer Success Services can help you deliver service excellence.

Net Promoter^®, NPS^®, NPS Prism^®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score^℠ and Net Promoter System^℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.