NAB: Telus shares hard IPTV lessons

LAS VEGAS – Facing a growing service quality problem with its IPTV rollout, Canadian service provider Telus last year took some extraordinary measures to revamp its customer support for IPTV in order to protect the overall Telus brand and reputation for reliability, Program Manager Dan Turner told a NAB show audience today.  In the process, Telus learned that its own processes were preventing its technicians from quickly identifying the root cause of problems so they could be fixed the first time.

"This wasn't about giving our technicians more tools," Turner said. "They had all the tools they needed. This was a process and people issue; it had nothing to do with technology."

Telus now has global technology standards throughout its service territory, technical installation checklists for its installers and standard troubleshooting procedures that are step-based and use warm handoffs of consumers to higher level techs, among other improvements, Turner said. Telus has already seen a 68% improvement in chronic problems by IPTV subscribers, he added.

In the course of trying to rapidly turn up IPTV customers, Turner said, Telus faced a lack of qualified technicians, pressures to reduce installation times and insufficient training in new systems, all of which combined to create a much higher number of chronic service problems that was driving up costs and threatening to cause churn. Because Telus is offering its IPTV offering as just another service under the Telus brand, its customers were expecting the same kind of reliability that they have come to expect from phone service, Turner said.

"There was a not-insignificant number of customers who were repeatedly calling in with issues, and we were repeatedly sending technicians out, but we weren't fixing their problems," Turner explained. "Having customers we were unable to fix really threatened to undermine our brand."

When Telus realized the scope of the problem, Turner said, it created a new team called ACT for Advanced Chronic Troubleshooting. ACT pulled expertise from every part of the service chain, starting at the chief technology officer's desk and including IP support (core network), video support, tech support (call center), fulfillment team (provisioning), IT system support, network operations and field support (technicians).

"All these stakeholder groups had been working in silos," Turner said. "We made a decision to take our top people out of their silos and put them on one team in one office to figure out what was going in with our chronic problems."