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 27 th 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. ... View more

Hi, my name is Brad Knights-Toomer and I am one of the Technical Support Analysts here at Plusnet. As we are split into three teams, we work 2 early shifts (7am - 4pm), 2 late shifts (2pm - 11pm) and have 2 days off. This is the typical shift pattern over 6 days and it allows for as many analysts in for the peak periods of the day. I am going to write about a typical early shift on Monday 18th June. 6:30am - This is the time when I get into work. It is slightly early but it does give me time to look through the various events that have been occurring the past two days when I have been off. I also take time to set everything up ready for the day ahead. The rest of the team come in between 6:15am and 7am for a 7am start. 7:00am - We find out what workflow (calls, tickets, faults, other) we are working today, I am doing the Billing pool until 9am and then on calls so should expect to answer around 50 calls today. The Billing pool involves Support Tickets where customers have normally asked for a MAC key but some outstanding payments are due. If the customer has remained with us then there is no need to take this payment but if the customer has left, we have to contact the customer regarding this. Don't worry, we don't contact customers before 9am :-) 8:00am - Between now and 9:00am, the rest of the business start coming in to work. Everything seems to have gone as normal so far this morning, we have taken quite a few calls which is usual for a Monday morning. 9:30am - Busy as usual, we have entered the peak time for a Monday morning. Calls have been coming in quick but they do not have any similar pattern to them. They are the usual calls, fault raising, email setup, fault updates and failed billing. Unfortunately our Call View screen has gone down so I cannot see how many customers are in the queue but I do expect it to be around 5 - 10. 9:45am - The call queue has shot up to 16 customers. Everyone we have here is busy trying to get this wait time down. Still no pattern to calls emerging. 10:30am - It has been a busy morning so far! 20 calls in queue. Most of the calls today have been either raising faults or faults updates. We are currently looking into ways to improve this area so customers will not need to call for updates as often. 11:45am - It seems to be the peak time of year for house moves as we have had a lot of customers ringing to check the status of their Broadband house move orders. The call queue has gone down as well to 7 customers with a wait time of around 7 minutes. I fully expect this number to jump up as customers start to go on their lunch breaks from work and ring us up. 12:30pm - As predicted, the call queue has shot up again with customers using some of their lunch break to chase up Broadband issues. 1:30pm - The call queue has come right down now, mostly due to more customers being back at work. Also within the next 30 minutes, agents on the next team will start to come in to work. This will mean double the amount of agents answering the phone so there should not be as long a wait in the queue. Currently so far the average wait time is 3 minutes 49 seconds, which is not too bad considering we have taken over 600 calls already. As you can expect, the call centre is bustling with busy agents taking calls, answering tickets, fixing faults, placing orders, retaining customers, and communicating to customers via the forums. 2:10pm - Both teams are in now and answering calls. The call queue has gone down to zero so any customers would be able to get straight through. During 2pm and 4pm, it is the best time to call as we do have double the amount of staff on to take calls. By now, we have taken over 700 calls which is around normal for the first day of the week. As there are no calls in the queue, there is another opportunity to answer customer questions raised in the Help Assistant. There are about 170 Questions in the ticket pool which we will go through. This should be reduced throughout the afternoon and mostly cleared by our Nights Staff. 3:10pm - Into my last hour of the shift. It has gone very quick today due to how busy it has been. So far today, we have taken over 850 calls and the average wait time is down to 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Everyone has been right on key today so things have gone smoothly, which is always a good thing! 4:05pm - The shift is over for me now. It has been very very busy today, myself taking 46 calls between 9am - 4pm and answering over 60 tickets. All in all, the total calls taken so far is just under 1000 which is a nice busy day for everyone! It has been a good day and it feels good to help customers with their Broadband. As my team mates and I get ready to go home and relax, the rest of the business are still plowing on with their work. The average call wait today has been 3 minutes and a couple of seconds, which has decreased throughout. I hope this blog has been insightful and given you an idea of what goes on in a typical shift. Brad ... View more