IPTV installers also the best sales people

It's hard to find someone who doesn't have a tech support nightmare story to tell. Mine involves brand-new, beige carpeting and the muddy boots on the cable guy who was replacing our modem for the fourth time in a month, with no appreciable impact on improving the service.

But I have to confess that was many years ago. Today's customer support challenges are different. Better remote monitoring of now-mature broadband technologies has made it easier to troubleshoot service without dispatching technicians and replacing perfectly good customer premises equipment.

The current frontier is the challenging process of installing video service bundles, and different companies are addressing the challenge in different ways. 

When Verizon launched its FiOS network, Wall Street made much of the multibillion-dollar cost of building a fiber-to-the-home network. Somewhat overlooked in the process were the human costs — Verizon did, and still does, send a technician into each home to handle the in-home wiring required to deliver FiOS to multiple TVs and PCs. So does AT&T for its U-verse service.  From the beginning, both companies have worked to drive down the costs of that process, reduce the time technicians spend in each home and generally smooth out what can be a frustrating time for customers.

Nonetheless, they also have launched a new generation of tech support nightmares.

Getting this process right is the difference between keeping a customer and watching them cut the cord. It also can be the difference between selling the advanced services that will drive up average revenue per user and paying a lot to connect a new customer who doesn't understand what's available and therefore spends the minimum.

Today's technicians have to be a combination of telecom tech, IP expert, PC troubleshooter, sales person and best pal. I mention the latter because some installations take all day, and if you can't make friendly conversation while prowling around someone's home for eight hours, that homeowner is going to hustle you out at the first opportunity, making the upsell much less likely.

And make no mistake: In-home installers have become the front line of customer sales. They have the first and best opportunity to show customers how interactive features work, demonstrate pay-per-view and on-demand, show off additional features such as caller ID on the TV that may be new to consumers, and suggest the appeal of other offerings as well.

In our recent exploration of interactive TV, my colleague Sarah Reedy and I found that these services are getting very specific to service providers — no two packages were the same. That means that each company's installers have to be up-to-date on the latest and greatest while being willing and able to provide compelling information to consumers to drive usage.

Now it could well be that after handling the complex process of hooking up TVs and PCs via coaxial cable or phone lines, demonstrating how to actually use the TV is a no-brainer, but it is also a different skill set, and there is no guarantee the two overlap.

Ray Stroud, senior adjunct with Baker University and an electronics trainer who is a subject matter expert for ETA International, said he sees a gap in what technicians are being trained to do and what they need to know.

Stroud and Teresa Miller, president of ETA International, a trade association that provides certification for 70 different electronics technical skills, said telecom industry executives could help their own cause by reaching out more to their local schools and community colleges and encouraging them to continue and expand electronics training. By agreeing to sit on boards or technical advisory committees and by speaking out, telecom execs could be ensuring a larger base of potential employees going forward.

E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.