SkyCreek Solves Comcast's Field Service No-Shows

Summary

About the company:

Comcast Communications is an American Fortune 500 telecommunications and mass media company. It is the largest provider of pay TV, cable TV and home internet service in the U.S. and the second-largest provider globally (by revenue).

Challenge:

Comcast was facing a costly customer communication challenge, where customers were not available for their scheduled repair appointments when the technicians arrived. Knowing the effects this has on customer satisfaction, coupled with how costly repeat services visits are, Comcast needed to find a way to improve communication between customers and field technicians and ensure quality service was being provided.

Solution:

SkyCreek provided an innovative solution to automate the various standardized communications to customers and provided an auditable closing of customer appointments, which enabled technicians to move onto their next appointments with ease.

Benefits:

Automated and standardized the communication to the customers in an attempt to get them to be present for their appointments.
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Provided a process to allow the field technicians to close appointments only after specific customer communications had been made at certain intervals in the process.
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Replaced manual processes that were impacting customer care as well as field technicians’ time, resulting in significant cost savings.
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Improved customer service, reporting and management.

The Challenges

Comcast was having difficulty ensuring customers were available for scheduled service visits. While customers were engaging with Comcast’s customer service representatives and requesting repair appointments, they were not present to allow access to their home when field technicians arrived for the scheduled appointments. In the central U.S. region, Comcast reported experiencing around 100,000 “not home occurrences” per month. This reduced overall customer satisfaction, as it hindered direct communication between customers and field technicians. It also negatively impacted the field technicians and their ability to work effectively. Additionally, repeat customer visits are costly.Strong customer service is of utmost importance to Comcast. Not only does it eliminate costly unstandardized and manual processes that hurt both the customers and Comcast staff, but it also ensures that customers receive a seamless standardized experience. To adhere to their mission of strong customer service, Comcast needed to identify a way to improve customer communication.

Solution

SkyCreek was identified as best equipped to handle Comcast’s communication problem. It recognized Comcast’s need for a multi-channel, multi-step communication process. This comprised of a channel that allowed customers to better communicate their availability, included easy rescheduling options, and advised that appointments would be closed customers were not present.To address the issues, SkyCreek developed and delivered the “Not Home Verification” (NHV) campaign. This campaign was entirely automated and standardized to avoid any additional burden on the customer service center (SC) at Comcast. The NHV campaign included the following functionalities and capabilities:
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• Allowed technicians to send inbound SMS messages with customer account numbers to inform the system of customer no- show situations.
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• Delivered interactive voice recording (IVR) phone calls to customers to let them know that technicians had arrived for appointments.
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• Allowed technicians to send follow-up messages if customers had not presented themselves after a 10-minute wait time and to include house descriptions in the appointment notes.
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• Delivered IVR phone calls to customers to inform them that their appointments had been closed, allowing technicians to move to their next appointments.
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• Updated billing systems with all customer communication details, updated appointment notes and closed appointments with the appropriate close nodes.

The NHV campaign allowed field technicians to effectively deal with customer no-shows using standardized, automated methods and without involving customer care resources. It also enabled them to easily move onto their next appointments. This resulted in both a reduced burden for Comcast’s SC as well as significant cost savings.

With the NHV campaign, Comcast could also now ensure that field technicians waited until appointment window start times and that they had enough time to complete jobs before their next appointments. In addition, the campaign provided Comcast field supervisors with dashboards, where they could track field technicians and their jobs in real time, and with reports, which provided analyses on field technicians’ performance and further understanding into why no-shows may be occurring.

The Benefits

Choosing SkyCreek has allowed Comcast to reduce costs, increase appointment completion percentages and reduce repeat appointments by:

Reducing costly care interactions the field technicians had to have to complete the manual process.
Increasing appointment completion percentage through communications to customers when technicians had arrived.
Enforcing standard and appropriate communications to customers through the process.
Providing an auditable documentation process for use during any later customer queries.

A quick snapshot of what Comcast’s cost savings looked like with the implementation of the NHV campaign:

An 800% INCREASE in return on investment
$5.24 cost-savings per instance, resulting in over $300,000 in monthly savings
Elimination of 185,000 calls into the SC

The NHV campaign proved to be successful in improving Comcast’s customer service and customer communication!