How Will Customer Support at Forked Deer Cut Call Handling Times 27 Percent?

At Forked Deer Connect, LLC, we deliver fast, reliable broadband services to previously unserved communities in rural western Tennessee. Being a rural provider and a member-owned co-operative, excellent customer service is at the heart of our business. In fact, our core proposition is 24/7, white glove customer experience enabled by Calix Revenue EDGE—particularly Calix Support Cloud (Support Cloud). Thanks to our partnership, we’ve grown our regional reputation for world-class, managed Wi-Fi. We’ve also delivered exceptional results against our customer support key performance indicators (KPIs).   

Since rolling out our managed Wi-Fi services in 2017, we’ve leveraged Support Cloud to resolve day-to-day and complex issues faster and live up to our promise of “above and beyond” service levels. We have trusted, real-time data at our fingertips, which means we can easily and quickly identify problems. And because that data reflects an end-to-end view of the subscriber experience—from the access edge into their homes—we have a comprehensive understanding of their issues. That means we can resolve problems faster. Having an end-to-end view of the subscriber experience from the access edge to their home eliminates the guesswork.   

Advances in Support Cloud Let Us Take Customer Service to the Next Level 

Our mission is to always find the root cause of a customer issue as quickly as possible. Enhancements to the Subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE) Score in Support Cloud make this even easier. With access to seven-day historical data, CSRs get an expanded view into the subscriber experience to more proactively identify service irregularity. Many of our subscribers call support up to 48 hours after experiencing an issue. Now we can help them in exactly the same way we help those who call immediately.  

With our small team of nine customer service representatives (CSRs) supporting 4,400 subscribers, these enhancements will have a significant impact on our KPIs:  

• Cut average call handling times by at least 27 percent. This expanded historical data will help us identify and resolve issues even more quickly. Our CSRs expect to cut call handling times by at least 27 percent. We’ve also harnessed Support Cloud to identify potential service-level issues and proactively contact subscribers to intervene before they even see a problem. Subscribers will never get this level of personalized care and attention from the bigger players.    
  
• Reduce or eliminate CSR churn. With Support Cloud, every member of our support team has the data and insights they need to provide the best possible service. Levelling up our team, including out-of-hours support, means anyone can handle a customer call at any time. This approach has boosted CSR confidence, job satisfaction, and retention. We have lost one CSR in three years—unheard of when many BSPs have up to 50 percent CSR churn rates per year.  
• Improve truck rolls by 38 percent with expanded visibility. With the seven-day data right at our fingertips, we no longer need to look at multiple logs to identify the subscriber’s problem. Or, worse—wait for the customer to experience the service issue again. We can diagnose and get to the bottom of the problem the first time. This enables us to reduce costly truck rolls. In fact, since 2020, we’ve lowered truck rolls by 38 percent. As a small team working with limited resources, this is a game-changer. 

We never settle for “that’s just the way it is.” With these new capabilities in Support Cloud, we can uphold our brand promise. Among our BSP peers, we want to raise the bar for subscriber experience, and Support Cloud helps us meet—and exceed—our performance metrics. 

To learn more about how best practices can increase workflow efficiency for your support team while also delighting your subscribers, check out our webinar, “Bring Agility to Subscriber Complexity: Lessons From Forked Deer Connect.”