One of the largest call drivers for ISP support teams today is customers who have internet but are experiencing slower than expected connection speeds, typically in the form of slow speed test results, buffering video, intermittent disconnects and more.
Contrary to popular belief, these connection issues are rarely caused by WAN or infrastructure problems but are instead a result of obstacles within the home network or LAN.
But as we’ve mentioned before, troubleshooting home network related issues can be tricky for ISP support agents for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:
- Non-tech savvy customers who know nothing about their networks
- Customers who provide incorrect information about their networks to agents
- A lack of insight into customers’ home networks (i.e. anything after the router)
Because of this general lack of knowledge, diagnosing in-home connectivity issues eats into a significant portion of technical support calls, adding to the overall cost to serve customers as well as degrading the customer experience.
Furthermore, these calls also often lead to technicians being sent to customers’ homes to deal with simple problems that could have been solved over the phone.
As you can imagine, between long call times, wasted agent time, unnecessary technician visits and eventual customer churn, the costs associated with not having a streamlined process for dealing with these home network-related support calls can be astronomical.
So what’s the solution?
With better insight into customers’ home networks, ISP support teams will be given the ability to quickly and accurately figure out what in the home is causing the connectivity problems.
Not only is this great for customers calling in with these issues, but ISPs who’ve implemented a well-thought-out network diagnostics solution have seen tons of value for their organizations as a whole.
3 key reasons ISPs should invest in network diagnostics
1. Lower support costs and increased efficiency
Whether support is managed by a dedicated call centre or a handled by a lean group of technical support agents, increasing efficiency and lowering support costs are probably things you care about.
How can you reduce the amount of resources required to handle the same number of calls? How can you handle more calls with the same resources? How can you do both without sacrificing the customer experience?
Network diagnostics is the answer to all of those questions. If agents are able to see directly into customers’ home networks, there’ll be no need for lengthy discussions to get the required info from customers. Not only will this reduce the customer effort, thus dramatically improving the customer experience, it will also reduce the average handle time of network related support calls. Meaning agents will able to handle more calls in the same amount of time, with the same resources or less.
2. Reduced customer churn
The typical troubleshooting process for internet related support calls involves agents asking customers for technical information that many of them are unable to provide. This inevitably becomes more and more frustrating for customers as the call goes on, leading to an extremely poor customer experience.
Giving agents insight into customers’ home networks not only lowers average call times and leads to more resolutions but significantly reduces the customer effort. All of these things combined lead to notable improvements in customer experience.
However, many ISPs continue to stick with this process as they grossly underestimate the impact of poor customer experience on their business – specifically churn.
3. Customer growth and increased revenue
Between increased support efficiency, fewer unnecessary technician visits, and reduced churn, the potential savings that come along with investing in network diagnostics are obvious. However, many ISPs fail to see the potential for customer growth and the resulting increased revenue.
Here are some stats that drive home exactly why investing in a better customer experience by empowering support agents with network diagnostics is so important to revenue growth.
- Consumers are willing to spend 17% more to do business with companies that deliver excellent service (source)
- Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% increases profits anywhere from 25 – 95% (source)
- 7 out of 10 consumers say they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service (source)
Network diagnostics: The key to support efficiency, reduced churn, and revenue growth
When evaluating network diagnostic solutions, most ISPs fully understand the potential of these types of tools on the support team.
Network-related support calls are notoriously difficult to handle, often requiring agents to ask a plethora of technical questions that customers rarely know how to answer. With network diagnostics, ISP support teams can simplify this process quite a bit.
But what most ISPs don’t realize is that the effects of a proper network diagnostics solution go well beyond the support team.
Not only do network diagnostics help decrease support costs through increased agent efficiency, but a more simple support process for network-related calls can have a direct effect on customer experience, customer churn, customer growth and increased revenue.
At RouteThis, we work with our clients to see past the obvious impacts of network diagnostics on their support teams and really understand the positive implications for their entire organization. We’ve helped many of our partners to reap all of these benefits and more, so if you’re interested in doing the same, you should definitely get in touch.