Offering Wi-Fi requires the ISP to develop a support setup that is geared towards solving in-home performance issues quickly and effectively whenever they occur – or better yet, before they occur. In this article, we give you some best practice insights for the support function.
With more and more European households incorporating connected devices into their homes, ever higher demands are being placed on ISPs to ensure a seamless internet experience. With stable Wi-Fi performance now being a non-negotiable feature in our homes like electricity, end-users are also more frustrated when their bandwidth isn’t available.
European ISPs experience this frustration particularly intensely. It is reported that up to 72 percent of all calls to their helpdesks concern in-home performance issues.
You can also read the article:
Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6?
Delivering the best in-home Wi-Fi experience is what matters
Click here to read
In addition to quality equipment and effective solutions, which can largely prevent the problem, the problem itself calls for well-functioning support. It is no secret that Wi-Fi may lead to many hours spent on helpdesk calls and potentially expensive truck rolls. But how does one create an effective support setup that gives high customer satisfaction while simultaneously keeping support costs at an acceptable level? This is a balance many ISPs are struggling to get right.
According to Icotera’s Erik Søe-Pedersen when it comes to those who do get it right, there is one consideration that is of greatest importance to them all:
- As an ISP you need to have a plan and long-term strategy for how you want to run your support. Structural considerations about how to organize an effective support setup is much more than qualified helpdesk employees and quick response times - support starts long before the end-consumer calls you, he explains.
Take quick actions
- Being able to solve an issue fast will not only increase customer satisfaction considerably, but it will also keep your expenses as an ISP down. But to get there, you need to offer a solution that by design makes you the best qualified to support your solution. Here the number-one requirement is insight.
FAST TRACK.....
-
- Offering Wi-Fi can lead to many hours spent on helpdesk calls and potentially expensive
truck rolls if you don’t have an effective and well-functioning support set-up. - In-home Wi-Fi monitoring gives the ISP valuable insight and provides a better outset for
supporting the Wi-Fi solution quickly and effectively – thereby reducing frustrations with
both the ISP and the end-user. - Tracking information across the customer portfolio provides valuable knowledge that
allows you to optimize the support process and effectively guide end-users towards
the desired outcome.
- Offering Wi-Fi can lead to many hours spent on helpdesk calls and potentially expensive
And insight is all about getting access to data – crucial information about in-home performance on an individual level. With that the ISP can not only take quick actions – but the right actions too.
- When an end-consumer calls and you have no insight whatsoever, the ISP has nothing to go on. In these cases, the standard recommendation to the end- consumer will often be: “Try turning your router off and on again.” But this rarely solves the problem. What’s worse, most end-consumers will have tried that old trick already, only adding to their frustration. Insight allows you to act proactively and offer concrete solutions because you have specifically identified the problem, allowing you to provide much better customer service – and to do so at a lower cost too, Erik Søe-Pedersen explains.
A common recourse for some ISPs is to try to fix a problem by sending a new router.
- In these cases, the CPE provided in the first place is simply too easy to replace, meaning that the quality must also be poor. The first step in reducing the resources you allocate to support is installing high-quality equipment. If you had done that in the first place, the problem might not even have occurred, Erik Søe-Pedersen points out.
With insight comes responsibility
It is not enough to have the tools to be able to diagnose a problem, you also need to know how to solve it.
- Effective support is actually all about professional counseling. Wi-Fi monitoring as a tool is a way to track data for your clients. When you do so, you are also building a knowledge bank of potential problems and how to solve them, which allows you as an ISP to react very quickly when an end-consumer is experiencing in-home performance issues, Erik Søe-Pedersen explains.
"As an ISP you need to have a plan and long-term strategy for how you want to run your support.
Structural considerations about how to organize an effective support setup is much more than
qualified helpdesk employees and quick response times - support starts long before the
end- consumer calls you."
Erik Søe-Pedersen, Chief Commercial Officer at Icotera
By tracking information across your customer portfolio, you learn what causes bad and good experiences. Erik Søe-Pedersen points out that this knowledge should be used strategically to optimize the process and thereby effectively guide end-users towards the desired outcome.
Solve the problem before the end-user calls
Erik Søe-Pedersen advocates that, ideally, the ISP should take this proactive approach one step further:
- By tracking the performance in the home, you get valuable data that could potentially be used to make AI solutions and recommendations for the end-users. In an ideal world, it should not be the end-consumer who calls the ISP. All things considered, the ISP should be able to recognize where there is room for optimization and where there are potential pitfalls, even before the end- consumer calls.
However, he recognizes that in reality most ISPs are probably not there yet:
- But the goal, nevertheless, can still be to get there. But primarily, it is a matter of offering a setup and solutions that you know will make the change a future possibility. Unfortunately, too many ISPs are stuck with solutions that make it impossible, he ends.
Want to know more about how to structure a successful Wi-Fi support set-up?
Please reach out: sales@icotera.com or give us a call at +45 70 10 00 33.
WANT to Deliver an internet experience – or just a box?
When taking control of the complete internet delivery, from the fiber connection to the Wi-Fi service, ISPs can create happy end-consumers having high-performing Wi-Fi with full in-home coverage – and make it a profitable business at the same time.
- Learn how in our e-book The ISP Guide to Offering Wi-Fi Service - Find the e-book here
- You might also find our guide with dos and don’ts for ISPs delivering Wi-Fi interesting.
Find the guide: 5 mistakes to avoid when offering Wi-Fi here
