THE CHALLENGEThe cable industry still remains under tremendous scrutiny after a tsunami of customer service disasters years ago. At their height, corporate acquisitions resulted in service provider changes for millions of subscribers, and cable was ranked as having the lowest level of customer satisfaction of the 42 industries profiled in The American Customer Satisfaction Index™. The Telecom-Cable Industry Satisfaction Report gave cable a score of only 60 on a scale of 100, and the Better Business Bureau reported that cable was number two on the list of industries that drew the most complaints.

Making matters worse, a high-profile web campaign against a major MSO, and a popular news story about a 76-year-old woman showing up at her cable office with a hammer blanketed the media. Both AT&T and Verizon were rolling out and heavily promoting new television products. Satellite providers advertised the results of a JD Power survey showing cable lagging behind telecom and satellite companies in customer service. The cable industry was under attack and the only solution was to increase service levels—and fast.

At the height of the dilemma, a large Northeastern cable system needed an effective solution to address long hold times. The company was reeling from an MSN Money – Zogby Poll that showed that 29 percent of their subscribers rated customer service as “poor,” and only 8 percent chose “excellent.” The issue at hand was increased call volume and reduced staff efficiencies at their contact center following the non-pay disconnections of delinquent subscribers.

The call spikes—which averaged 40,000 per month—negatively impacted overall customer service levels by compromising answer rates and pushing hold times above 25 minutes. In addition to angering customers calling in for sales or service, many temporarily disconnected subscribers were permanently lost as they abandoned the complicated IVR without making a payment.

The system’s collections team needed a solution to manage the call volume and allow their internal contact centers to remain focusedon subscribers with sales, service, billing, and customer care issues.

AT S C S 1 0 3 2 9 — I N B O U N D P D F www.etanindustries.com One Galleria Tower 13355 Noel Road, 21st Floor Dallas, TX 75240

THE SOLUTIONThe cable system partnered with ETAN Industries, a Dallas-based provider of outsourced solutions, to address the problem. Together, they designed a program to improve service at the system level, reduce hold times and manage the call volume spikes associated with non-pay service disconnections.

The solution was to reroute calls from disconnected delinquent subscribers to ETAN, where dedicated payment specialists, connected directly to the client’s billing platform, could act as an extension of the system’s customer service team to take payments and restore service. The results were immediate. By allowing ETAN to handle the payment calls, the system’s contact center was ableto focus on the higher value sales calls and provide optimum service to the 95 percent of subscribers who pay on time.

THE RESULTS—After the first 30 days

• 50,000 calls were redirected from the cable system’s call center to ETAN

• $1.5 million in live-agent and IVR payments processed• 11,000 subscribers reconnected• 15 percent decrease in permanent service disconnections• The system was immediately able to once again meet FCC mandated service standards of answering calls within 30 seconds

“By allowing ETAN to handle the payment calls the system’s call

contact center was able to focus on higher value sales and service calls.”

Outsourcing Calls to Improve Inbound Performance: A Case Study