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Bright House
Networks Q&A

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Contact Center:
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Executive Q&A with Aspect Software Customer:

Bright House Networks

Bill Sievers –
Vice President of Customer Care

• Name of company – Bright House Networks
• Business process – Customer Service
• Number of centers – 4 inbound contact centers
• Products in use – Aspect® Customer Self Service™

1. What do you like most about overseeing the contact center activities for your business?
   
   
   • The thing I like most about managing the contact center is seeing first hand the process improvements and how our customers respond to those improvements. The contact center is a barometer for the health of the company and the initiatives we put in place have a significant impact. It is observing the results of those process improvements that I like best.
     
     
2. How have the customer service challenges of your business changed in the last several years?
   
   
   • The customer service challenges have changed quite in a bit. One of those challenges is the number of new technology options available to our customers, which has made it both easier and more difficult to provide better service. We are able to extract more information than ever before, which is giving us greater insight into the business, but we have to work extra hard to make sure that the technology is still allowing us to stay in touch with the customers.
   • And as a growing telecommunications company, the amount of products we are offering continues to increase, which also makes it complicated getting the customers routed to the right agent to manage their calls appropriately and provide resolution.
     
     
3. How is your organization successfully addressing these changing customer service requirements?
   
   
   • We are doing a lot more customer research to determine how satisfied they are with our service and our overall customer service processes. That plays a very significant role in how our contact center operates. And, we have a mission statement at Bright House - we want to provide a one touch, one feel experience for customers. This means that agents are required to respond quickly to customer requests - their focus is always on first call resolution. As part of that, we have to make sure that our agents have the appropriate training and knowledge management to provide that resolution. Lastly, we have zero tolerance for poor customer service. People are more likely to respond to an agent that is friendly and courteous, even if they may not have the answers.
   • Most importantly, we know that we are being successful because we have received acknowledgment of those efforts with a recent J.D. Power and Associates Customer Satisfaction award.
     
     
4. What feedback have you received from your customers as a result of these new customer service initiatives?
   
   
   • The feedback from the customer has been very positive. In fact, interestingly enough, with our self service system, the customers say it is so easy to use that they welcome the opportunity to interact with the self service system.
   • We have various systems and various ways of communicating with customers, so it’s important that we provide a consistent experience. And the feedback from the customers has forced us to change the way we manage many of our processes. All to the good, of course.
     
     
5. How do you positively motivate your agents?
   
   
   • We have a scorecard performance management system in place. Each day the agents can see their performance and how it stacks up against their individual goals. The system is used to help manage salary increases for the year, so it’s good that they can see exactly how they are performing throughout the year.
   • We also budget a lot of time for the agents to receiving coaching, briefings, as well as continual training. Plus we have a very optimal supervisor to agent ratio – 14 agents for every supervisor – which ensures agents are getting plenty of one-on-one focus.
   • In addition, we offer monthly incentive programs around sales. Even customer service agents that are handling billing or account information are eligible for the sales incentives.
   • Lastly, we have what we call “quality moments” for agents that have a 100% on their scorecard. If they achieve a 100 percent, they are eligible for prizes.
     
     
6. What one piece of advice would you give to other contact center professionals about achieving success?
   
   
   • The one piece of advice I would offer other contact center professionals is that no matter how great their technology infrastructure and that they have the same exact technology deployed across all of their contact centers, performance can only be great if it’s based on the management techniques in place that are focused on motivating the agents.
   • And in my opinion, a quality monitoring program is the starting point of a successful call center. You can add other applications on top of that later that will also bring value, but the quality monitoring program is the place where it all begins. This reflects the personality of the contact center and contact center management.