Top 3 trends driving WiFi customer experience
With more than 20 connected devices in the average US household, delivering a flawless in-home WiFi experience is more critical than ever to attract and retain internet subscribers. Speed and price have been replaced as key differentiators in this competitive market, and the focus has shifted to providing the best possible customer experience (CX) across all touchpoints — including installation, repair and support.
In fact, 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services. That means your subscribers expect a high quality of experience (QoE) — on every device, in every room, all the time. And when that doesn’t happen, customers are quick to move on, with 15% of Service Provider churn occurring within the first 90 days of installation.
Delivery of outstanding QoE begins on day one, but every touchpoint contributes to shaping a subscriber’s WiFi experience. Here are three key trends that we see driving the future of WiFi CX, and that every Service Provider should consider to meet rising customer expectations.
Trend 1: QoI
You can’t deliver exceptional in-home WiFi QoE without a superior quality of install (QoI). But most Service Providers have little visibility into the quality of their installations, as operations managers can’t ride along with every technician in the field. To measure and improve QoI for a consistent, high-quality experience, Service Providers need standard processes, objective key performance indicators (KPIs) and visibility into the data.
That’s where RouteThis QoI insights can help. QoI provides Service Providers with an objective overall metric that measures, evaluates and validates the quality of in-home WiFi installations. Using the RouteThis Certify platform, each of the five QoI metrics can be measured, allowing operations leaders to train their field teams to deliver the best WiFi CX, prevent coverage issues, reduce costly repeat truck rolls and most importantly, reduce customer frustration and churn.
RouteThis Certify runs on a field technician’s smartphone or tablet, guiding optimal placement of customer premise equipment (CPE), as well as uncovering upsell opportunities such as premium WiFi offerings, and mesh networks. The platform verifies WiFi coverage and speed in every room and floor of the subscriber’s home.
Trend 2: DIY
An increasing number of customers are looking for do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions, with 81% attempting to solve issues themselves before calling into support, and 75% noting the convenience of self-service. So if Service Providers can deliver a great DIY experience, their customers are less likely to become frustrated, leave bad reviews and churn.
Moreover, DIY goes beyond just customers bringing their own routers and devices, extending to self-support to resolve a range of network issues. As a result, intuitive self-service solutions are required at three critical points of engagement:
- WiFi installation
- WiFi management
- WiFi support
What makes a good DIY experience? It should be easy to use, personalized, fast, accurate and educational. That’s why we incorporated these attributes in the next-generation of our RouteThis Helps platform to give your customers even more powerful WiFi diagnostics to identify, troubleshoot and resolve WiFi issues without ever contacting support.
RouteThis Helps works in 3 steps:
- Analyze: Subscribers download the app and run a complete WiFi network scan using their mobile device to collect hundreds of data points, as if a technician were in their home.
- Identify: The diagnostics are compared to millions of other scans to identify the root cause of the Wi-Fi issue. Some of the most common ones are poor WiFi coverage, signal interference and network congestion.
- Resolve: The app generates easy-to-follow troubleshooting steps that help subscribers solve Wi-Fi issues independently. In the rare cases where calling into support is necessary, agents can access all historical scan information using the RouteThis Resolve platform.
By providing customers a great DIY experience, Service Providers can reduce average handling time (AHT) with efficient troubleshooting and resolution solutions, keeping support costs low while increasing customer satisfaction. The RouteThis Helps platform offers flexible deployment models, with a RouteThis branded app, white-label options or SDK for integration into existing applications.
Trend 3: AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used for automation and analytics insights. From generative AI and machine learning (ML), to large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, AI advancements are transforming WiFi CX, helping to streamline troubleshooting and support.
Specific uses for AI in the realm of WiFi CX extend across several major aspects:
- Hardware - AI at the edge
- Software - Adaptive WiFi
- Support - Agent-assist or AI agents
With the trend toward automated chatbots in recent years, the evolution to AI-assisted support is a natural extension. However, when we consider how AI can be applied for WiFi support, it’s important to work with partners that are aware of the risks as well as the opportunities. For example, the potential for AI hallucinations, IP risks and systemic bias all need to be addressed and mitigated when incorporating AI into existing systems and workflows.
Getting CX right from day one
There is tremendous business impact for Service Providers that deliver the best possible QoE from day one, including greater customer retention, reduced support call volume, lower AHT and potentially millions of dollars in savings by decreasing truck rolls. In addition, companies that invest in customer experience improvements typically see a 32% increase in cross-selling and upselling to boost average revenue per unit (ARPU), such as with mesh upgrades.
To learn how to take full advantage of the top three trends driving WiFi customer experience, watch this helpful webinar conducted by RouteThis in partnership with the Fiber Broadband Association.