September 28, 2022 by Alan Marks

How Sharing Data and Insights Between Operations and Support Teams Can Drive Success

 

Alan Marks

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Calix

 

The single biggest priority facing broadband service providers (BSPs) is to keep the network up and running. That’s always been the case. But in an era where subscribers are relying on your network to work from home, learn from home, and access vital services from home—network reliability and availability are more important than ever.

Responsibility for ensuring an ‘always on’ connection falls on the shoulders of operations teams. And as services become more complex, so does the operational support. This is the second big topic in our series on managing operational complexity—or “taming the beast.”

But operations teams are not the only personnel responsible for dealing with network issues. In fact, it's your customer support teams that must diagnose and successfully address subscriber trouble calls as they arise.

Integrating Operations and Support Data Through a Common Cloud Platform

So how can operations and support teams become more closely integrated? At Calix, we have developed the cloud-based tools to unlock data currently trapped in the network and turn it into actionable insights for use across all departments. This means, for example, that Calix Operations Cloud (Operations Cloud) complements and integrates with a range of other Calix and third-party systems, notably Calix Support Cloud (Support Cloud).

This integration allows data and insights from Operations Cloud to be shared with Support Cloud, providing a single view for customer service representatives (CSRs). This reduces the need for support staff to “swivel chair” between multiple systems. The combination of these two solutions enhances the subscriber experience in two key ways:

  • Operations Cloud proactively identifies network health issues. These are flagged to CSRs in Support Cloud, providing CSRs with views of both real-time and historical ONT performance, for example. This helps CSRs get to the root cause of the problem—quickly.
  • By reducing the number of issues that escalate from customer support to operations teams, subscriber issues are also resolved more quickly. As well as further driving customer satisfaction, it can serve to reduce the number of truck rolls by 40 percent.

The combination of Operations Cloud and Support Cloud brings benefits to BSPs of all shapes and sizes. For example, Calgary-based Canadian Fiber Optics (CFOC) says Operations Cloud is allowing them to more efficiently allocate operational resources. This has resulted in lower operating costs and a reduction in staff workloads.

“With Operations Cloud, we no longer hold our operations team back from the high-value work they want to accomplish,” says CFOC’s Rajdeep Singh. “And because our customer support team is empowered to troubleshoot with our subscribers on a case-by-case basis, our technical team can focus on large-scale issues within the network.”

This is a game changer for BSPs. By raising the efficiency of both broadband operations and customer support, these solutions are enabling BSPs to focus on the things that matter, such as deploying innovative new solutions that grow revenue and delight subscribers.

Follow us through this “Tame the Beast of Operational Complexity” series, featuring one final blog post to help you find your way out of the complexity jungle. What’s next? It’s all about automation—and how you can leverage it to streamline your operations model.

Discover how you can reduce operational complexity for your operations teams by downloading our latest eBook, “Tame the Beast—Take Operations From Reactive to Proactive Through Insights and Automation.