Broadband Internet access in North American households has increased from 29 percent at the end of 2004 to 41 percent in 2006 according to “North American Consumer Technology Adoption Study 2006” a Forrester Research study.
While adoption of broadband services continues to increase, telcos like phone, broadband, and digital TV services provider Windstream Communications are forced to deal with the issue of servicing both tech savvy users as well as nontechnical customers.
The company was inundated with high call volumes and lacked any insight into customers PCs; no automated self-services options were available to customers and no other tech support besides calling Windstreams call center.
David Fritz, senior vice president of IT at Windstream said that that the company had an “installation process that did not check the customer’s PC qualifications and did not provide a smooth automated process to establish Windstream ISP services or email accounts.”
To remedy the problem Windstream chose the Motive High-Speed Data solution, management automation software that has been renamed Broadband Check-up Center, according to Ben Geller, Motives director of strategic marketing. The company gradually installed the software from February 2005 through June 2005.
“By providing zero-touch activation, an easy-to-use self-service capability that allows subscribers to turn up high-speed data services themselves without having to call a CSR or request a truck roll for an on site technician, Motive enables carriers like Windstream to provide a consistently high-quality service experience for all their subscribers,” Geller says.
The results of the software implementation have been positive. Incoming calls to the call center have decreased 38 percent, customer service reps call handling rates rose 125 percent allowing them to handle 50 percent more accounts over the previous year. Also service calls have dropped because of the reliability of remote diagnosis and problem resolution.
“Windstream is working to encourage approximately 200,000 legacy broadband customers to adopt Motive technology,” Fritz says, and for the future, “we want to use Motive’s diagnostic capabilities to gather even more data about the customer’s processing environment to help service reps resolve issues even more efficiently and effectively.”
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Mike is a staff writer for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
