Regardless of the geographic market in question, internet service providers (ISP) face intense competition due to their cost to serve and the growing number of customers who buy their services based on price.
In 2021, UK-based ISP Zen Internet appointed Dean Burdon to the newly-created role of customer experience director as part of its strategy to double revenue.
In this interview with CX Network, Burdon talks about his work to simplify and digitalize Zen’s customer experience and the CX challenges that ISPs face.
CX Network: What is in your in-tray at present and what can Zen Internet customers – both consumer and business – expect over the short- to mid-term?
Zen is great at voice-based customer support, which we are incredibly proud of, but it is important that we build alternatives into our infrastructure to suit different lifestyles and customer preferences.
Customers are generally time poor and so delivering great self-service capabilities and different digital options for online interactions will help them get what they need faster.
CX Network: Customer churn and loyalty are key factors for ISPs. When it comes to providing a great experience, what needs do customers want their ISP to meet?
Dean Burdon: In a market landscape where the fundamentals of the service on offer are quite similar from provider to provider, customer service is one area where ISPs can differentiate themselves very clearly. At Zen we are really happy that our customer churn rates are lower than average and significantly less than our competitors; when a customer discovers Zen they tend to stay with us.
We find that our customers really value the experience offering we provide. When they call us, they can quickly get through to someone who is empowered to manage and respond to their query end-to-end. We do not read from scripts and will make every effort to understand the specific query on a case-by-case basis, which is something our customers often mention as a benefit.
Believe it or not, as broadband providers we also want to be forgotten! We want our offering to be so seamless, low effort and so easy that a customer never, or very rarely, has to get in touch with us – meaning we do not stick in their mind as being problematic or difficult to communicate with.
Ultimately, when you put the effort on the customer, you see higher churn rates.
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CX Network: How is Zen Internet using first-party data to refine its overall customer experience?
Dean Burdon: At the moment, we are leveraging our data to make sure our support for customers becomes more proactive than reactive. We want to find and fix faults before they become a problem to our customers. With the advancements of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) we are starting to see opportunities where we can use tools to make our customer experience surpass expectations.
Our [network] data provides invaluable insight into how our products and services perform for our customers. We review our customer contacts, device and network performance in real-time and feed that data into our product development and process decisions.
Every day we aim to make Zen a little better than the previous day and data is key to making that happen.
CX Network: In the ISP space, how price driven are consumer and business customers at present?
Dean Burdon: Price is a key factor. Customers in the UK are understandably increasingly cost-conscious given the cost-of-living crisis. It is not, however, the only thing they are considering.
Customers value a quality standard of service and are often willing to pay more for this. It is not until things go wrong with your internet connection that people realize how valuable this is; being on hold for hours to try to get a fix when things go wrong is frustrating.
At the end of the day, customers do not want a cheap yet poor service – when choosing a provider they are trying to balance cost and quality and are increasingly sensitive to this as they aim to maximize their value for money.
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CX Network: When it comes to price-based promotions, connectivity providers are limited in how much they can reduce the cost of data provision. In this context, what role does automation, self-service etc., play in keeping prices competitive and reducing churn?
Dean Burdon: Automation can be a critical way to minimize the cost to serve and keep prices competitive, but you do not want to do so at the expense of customer experience. Minimizing the cost to serve too much, by using robots as the primary communication channel for example, can ultimately degrade the service and cause frustration.
For us it is about channel of choice; if a customer wants to deal with a query via live chat, then we need to be able to facilitate that. Some prefer social media and others prefer being able to call up and speak to someone without having to wait too long. At Zen, we try to make sure each of these channel options are available as it makes us more convenient and flexible to work with.
Ultimately, you can reduce churn by ensuring a customer can contact you by whatever means they are most comfortable with.
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CX Network: What do you see as the greatest CX challenge for ISPs at present?
Dean Burdon: For ISPs, the customer default behavior is to call when something goes wrong. When you experience an electricity outage, you can look up and down the street to see if your neighbors are impacted too, but you cannot do that with your broadband, so you call your provider.
The biggest challenge is shifting that perception so it is not the default and instead empowering consumers to feel confident and self-manage their home network, where possible. It is all about enhancing customer education and confidence - especially amidst the surge in IoT and smart devices in the home and the increasing reliance on the internet for home working.
Another challenge is that ISPs across the board are so cost-oriented, rather than being customer oriented. The industry has brought the costs so low - to remain competitive - that they cannot even deliver a good service. The industry needs to pivot to find a middle ground, shift their priorities and address the poor reputation it has brought on itself.