Your 5-Stage Roadmap To Achieve Service Excellence

In today’s incredibly competitive broadband landscape, winners and losers are not determined by who delivers the fastest speeds or the best prices. Those are just table stakes. Successful broadband service providers (BSPs) must provide an exceptional subscriber experience. Subscribers don’t just want internet service—they want a BSP that understands their needs, solves their problems, and makes their lives easier, safer, and better.
 

At the core of this exceptional experience is service excellence. Not that long ago, customer support existed largely to fix problems that arose. Today, customer service is an integral element of the subscriber experience. Customer support representatives (CSRs) proactively prevent issues rather than just resolve them. They are brand ambassadors—recommending products and services to enhance subscribers’ lives and educating subscribers to get the most out of their experience.

Calix’s Customer Service and Support Continuum

Of course, this is an evolutionary process. Every BSP’s business is unique, and you’re at different stages of the service lifecycle. Recognizing this, Calix developed a guide to help BSP leaders on the journey to service excellence. This five-stage customer service and support continuum is designed to guide BSPs when advancing your service operations.
 

Stage 1

In Stage 1, you operate in a reactive or break/fix model where subscribers must report a problem before it can be addressed. You provide basic troubleshooting before rolling a truck, and it takes longer to resolve issues.
 

Stage 2

In Stage 2, the support team leverages a managed Wi-Fi solution for remote troubleshooting to increase operational efficiency and reduce truck rolls. Subscribers must still report a problem, but resolution often occurs on the first call to support.
 

Stage 3

In Stage 3, you are transitioning to proactive support with some self-service options and limited key performance indicator (KPI) tracking. You may have some components of omnichannel support, such as email, phone, chatbot, live chat, asynchronous chat, and self-service app.
 

Stage 4

In Stage 4, you deliver reactive and proactive support with self-service and programmatic KPI tracking. You have two or more omnichannel support systems in place, and your technicians are brand ambassadors. Subscriber issues are often resolved before they know there is a problem, and they can self-serve and interact with the support team through multiple channels at their convenience.
 

Stage 5

In Stage 5, you achieve service excellence, delivering reactive and proactive support with self-service and comprehensive KPI tracking. You also achieve alignment across the entire organization in delivering a differentiated subscriber experience. You proactively monitor the subscriber experience, so subscribers notice very few issues. You operate with omnichannel support, so if there is an issue, subscribers can self-serve or reach out through various channels and expect fast issue resolution without a truck roll.

Where BSPs Are Today and How To Level Up

We polled a group of BSPs, and nearly three-quarters identified their BSP at Stage 3, where they’re becoming more proactive, leveraging select KPIs to improve continually, and offering self-service options. Additionally, less than one-sixth identified as Stage 4, where proactive support and self-service are standard operating modes, and data-driven key performance indicators (KPIs) guide their business.
 

One thing that unites all the BSPs, regardless of their current stage, is their aspiration to achieve Stage 5, service excellence. We are here to help.
 

As service leaders, you face many challenges in delivering an exceptional subscriber experience. These include managing network complexity and increasing workloads, modernizing outdated processes and siloed systems, tracking the right KPIs to monitor and improve performance, and ensuring cross-organizational alignment and buy-in.
 

We know the journey isn’t always straightforward and that change is hard. But Calix is here to help you move to the next stage in the continuum. In fact, all our products are now “Powered by Success,” meaning Calix Success guidance, expertise, and resources are included with your investment.
 

With Calix SmartLife™ managed services backed by the power of the Calix Broadband Platform, and Calix Success experts as your partner every step of the way, we will help you transform the subscriber experience and your business.
 

I’d love to hear more about your journey. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at john.durocher@calix.com.