CSC Automation Projects

Workplace is our internal management platform that brings together all our internal systems into one tool. Since April, we have rolled out a number of improvements and automation projects to our Workplace platform (and on the Portals) to enhance the efficiency of our Customer Support Centre, and put more control into the hands of customers.

Automated Faults Tool

The automated faults tool has revolutionised the way we report and respond to faults. The tool is available on our Portal (and can also be run via Workplace) and allows you to report a fault with your connection. Those of you who have used the tool will know that it automatically runs a series of automated tests, including woosh tests and connection checks and determines which further action is necessary.

The latest incarnation of this tool can automatically submit the fault to BT via XML, if required, saving around 10 minutes per reported fault – which is the amount of time it takes to manually enter a fault into BT’s system. The rollout of this project has freed up a significant amount of time previously taken up by the CSC investigating faults and has allowed them to focus on reducing our support wait times and working on more technical issues.

In addition, the total time for a fault to be reported, investigated and resolved has reduced since the tool became available as the tool performs all the automated tests and asks all the appropriate questions that BT require answering before investigating. This reduces ‘ticket-tennis’ and is designed to improve your experience so that we can resolve your fault as soon as possible.

SMS Gateway

Shortly following the Faults Tool rollout, we developed and introduced an SMS Gateway within Workplace that allows us to provide fault updates to you by SMS Text Message. This improves response times and fault resolution times by alerting customers in real-time as to any developments with their Broadband Fault. We will look to further extend the functionality of the SMS Gateway into other areas in 2007.

House Moves Tool

This tool puts you in complete control of moving your Broadband if you move house. Previously, our Technical Support Analyst’s were required to place two separate orders in BT’s systems: one order to cease the old service; and one order to activate the new line. In addition to this, they had to raise manual invoices for payment, and tickets generally bounced between our CSC and customers as the order progressed.

Raising an order with BT, manually, can take about 5 minutes – making the whole process for a manual house move take up around 10-15 minutes of a Technical Support Analyst’s time.

Now, however, you can simply select from available dates via a web form, and Workplace automatically sends both the cease and provide orders to BT by XML. We then contact you by E-Mail to explain the process and the system automatically raises the appropriate invoice.

Cancellation / Auto Cease Tool

We don’t want customers to leave us, but on the occasions when they do – we want it to be as pain-free as possible.

For that reason, we streamlined our internal processes and built an internal tool to process the requests. It allows the Technical Support Analyst to calculate, exactly, any outstanding or pro-rata fees that the Customer owes by simply entering a cancellation date. When the customer authorises payment of these, it then takes the payment automatically, places a cease order with BT via XML, and E-Mails the customer to inform them what is happening – and when.

For customers who migrate, our automated scripts close your account (unless you advise otherwise) as soon as we receive confirmation from BT that the migration is complete. On occasions where this doesn’t happen (LLU transfers for example) we can close down the account using the Cancellation Tool, manually.

Auto Refunds Tool

This project involved rolling out a simplified refund procedure into Workplace that made it more efficient for the CSC to process refunds, and easier for customers to understand. Enhanced functionality, such as the ability to refund into the originating Bank Account, rather than only onto a card, was also rolled out as part of this.

Prior to the rollout, the CSC had to ‘credit’ an invoice, and then return the payment to the customer manually – in 2 steps. Payment could only be refunded onto a card as a ‘one-off’ refund. This is now integrated into one tool, requiring one action, and the refund is applied to the payment method used to pay. This means that we can refund directly to bank accounts, when necessary, rather than asking you to add a card to your account.

Help Assistant Refresh

This project looked at streamlining and improving the Customer Facing ‘ Help Assistant’, reducing the number of inbound contacts, encouraging customers to self-serve, but not at the expense of degrading the customer experience.

Feedback on the Help Assistant has been positive. You follow an intuitive path through the ‘wizard’ and are presented with a number of support documents and online tools that allow them to manage your account and find Help & Support. If this is not helpful, then you are given the opportunity to contact the Support Team directly.

The Support Team have visibility of which path through the Help Assistant you have taken, and can advise accordingly based on this. Additionally, the Help Assistant can be designed to drop queries you raise (tickets) into differing pools based on the nature of the enquiry and skill-sets of our Technical Support and Customer Care Analysts.

The refresh of our Help Assistant also included improvements to the code and URLs, making it ‘cleaner’ and also providing us with a more powerful customer facing search facility – powered by our Google Mini Box.

Our Service Status tool was also improved as part of this work and the Help Assistant will now show appropriate Service Status alerts where there is a known issue with a particular service. This means that you are provided with all the information necessary to decide whether or not your query needs intervention or reply by our Support Team.

CSC IVR

Feedback on our previous IVR wasn’t great. In order to improve your experience when you call us, we rolled out a number of changes and improvements to our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. This gives the callers more pre-defined options as to what their query involves – and allows us to direct your call to agents with certain skills.

This has allowed us to provide new starters into our support team with the easier Sales and Customer Services calls before introducing them to Technical calls or Faults.

The IVR has also allowed us to launch a Service Status information line, where customers can hear pre-recorded Service Status information in real-time. In addition, we have been able to deliver a specialised Business Support number, and prioritised Broadband Faults Helpline to our customers.

Interleaving Tool

This work involved streamlining and automating the ability to control Interleaving on a Customers’ line. Interleaving is a feature that BT employ to improve stability on an unstable broadband line at the expense of latency (or ping time).

The rollout of MAXDSL by BT caused problems for all ISPs, so we took the decision to switch Interleaving on, by default, to all new signups. This tool also included a regular cron script that ran and switched on interleaving for anyone raising a Broadband Fault. This was a first-step diagnostic procedure for anyone on a MAXDSL line – to improve stability.

However, we understand that some customers may not wish to have Interleaving switched on, due to the added latency – so we developed a customer facing Interleaving Tool on our Web Portals, and the same for Workplace. This allows you, or our support staff, to press a button which automatically sends an order to BT to switch this to “Automatic”, which is where the exchange will determine if it is necessary for the line. This order is sent by XML. We also made modifications to a reporting script that feeds our Customer Information such that we have visibility of the current Interleaving state of a customer line at any one time.

Tiscali LLU Faults

We deal with Tiscali, mainly, by E-Mail. This includes fault reporting, updates and order updates. This project involved creating a Workplace Tool that allowed us to handle fault reporting – at the touch of a single button.