Use it to improve customer service
DENVER – For the cable industry, collecting network and customer data is not the problem. The real issue is making sense of all the data streaming in – and then putting it to good use.
Cable executives discussed this critical challenge during several panels at last month’s SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo show. They agreed that making better use of the data that they collect, in part by leveraging new technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, could lead to big improvements in customer service, the industry's long-time Achilles heel.
"If there’s ever an industry that’s primed and could benefit from taking data and making it available to agents and customers, it’s ours," Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson declared during one show panel. "I think it’s really going to change the customer experience, profoundly.”
In fact, Watson said he sees artificial intelligence and machine learning as the next big focus areas for the industry, particularly to mine data from devices and networks to boost customer service levels. He noted that Comcast just hosted an AI demo day in its Philadelphia home market. "It’s incredible," he said.
But first cable operators must get a handle on all that information flowing into their systems. Martin Marcinczyk, VP of personalization for Comcast, noted the U.S.'s largest MSO takes in more than 250 pieces of data around the delivery platform multiplied millions of times. “Our customers interact with us a billion times a day,” he said. “And we don’t have one system, we have hundreds.”
Fortunately for Comcast, it seems to be making progress in leveraging all that data. “We have so much information, we can begin to predict when we’ll have successful events — or not so successful events,” Marcinczyk said. To buttress his point, he showed a video of Comcast ramping up its operations to support customers who recently suffered through disastrous storms.
Many cable operators, however, aren’t nearly so fortunate yet. Offering something of a reality check, Gary Cunha, senior director of product management for equipment supplier Arris, shared input received earlier this year from a midsized operator: “We’re still reactive; when a spike in calls hits the call center, we really have no idea what caused it,” he quoted the provider saying.
To make better use of data for customer care, industry experts recommended several steps, starting with a change in mindset. For example, Cunha suggested thinking of the call center as the last, not the first, point of contact with the customer, sort like the goalkeeper on a soccer team. “Think of operations as a soccer team,” he said. “There are about seven opportunities to prevent the goal.”
CableLabs principal architect Karthik Sundaresan agreed that the right mental framework is key. “Before I create a machine to do something, first I have to visualize it,” he said. “Can I understand it?”
With the right mindset, panelists said data could be leveraged for many things, including improving the technical workforce, practicing proactive home and network management and fostering subscriber self-care. In one use case presented by Cunha, cable staffers tapped data to analyze the root cause of open work orders that were generating a flood of customer calls. The solution led to a major decrease in repeat truck rolls and fault-based service calls, generating savings of $1.6 million in one quarter for the operator.
In another use case, Arris helped a large European operator battling a surge in customer complaints about lackluster Wi-Fi service. Cunha said the vendor tackled the problem by setting up a program for telemetry analysis and evaluation of channel utilization, access points and client received signal strength indication (RSSI).
Customer and network data can also be used to boost customer self-care. For instance, Cunha said simple requests for SSIDs and passwords make up the top two reasons for Wi-Fi-related service calls, accounting for 30 percent of the calls. He termed that situation “a prime opportunity to exploit customer readiness for technology.”
