One of the key drivers for customer satisfaction with fault restoration is communication.

Communicating the right expectations to customers is fundamental to setting up a good fault experience. By reducing the arrival window, we want to improve expectations with customers to make it easier for them to plan their day around the tech visit.

In October 2022 we made changes to appointment bookings in our Assurance channels, with CSR agents confirming a four-hour tech arrival window with the customer. This has been a massive end to end change for the industry, from the CSR agent right through to the tech. Off the back of this, 81% of customers are finding our appointments to be at a convenient time.

We want to keep improving the Customer Experience and provide more flexibility to customers by further reducing the tech arrival window to two hours in major Chorus areas. For example, this will help the customer to book the technician to come after they drop their kids off at school, or after they finish work.  

We had initially signalled (at the TCF Product Forum) that we intended to go live with this in April 2024, however to make sure this is the best experience for the customers we needed to do a bit more work, including trialling the tighter arrival window with our service companies.  

One of the key findings from our trial was that meeting a 2-hour window in more regional areas would be difficult due to long drive times between areas for our technicians.  

Based on these findings, two-hour technician arrival windows will be offered for fibre faults in the following major Chorus areas: Auckland, Wellington, Napier/Hastings, Palmerston North and Dunedin. These areas represent around 80% of fibre faults. The remainder of the country will remain at a four-hour tech window. Copper faults will remain at 4-hour nationwide.

This change will take place on 19 August 2024.

Note: These changes have no impact on the calculation of SLA performance or rebates.

To make the most of these changes, and to ensure the end customer has the correct expectations set, we encourage you to set this window with your customer and include the timeframe in any communications with them.

For API users, we are seeking your input on what you will need to test this change and will schedule a collaborative discussion with you in April. Those best to attend are technology architects, senior technical leads or test leads. If you are interested in attending, please reach out to your account team by 10 April 2024. 

Portal Example

Current booking times:  

 *This assumes that there are bookable 4-hour windows in the booking system. It will not show the windows if there are none in the booking system. 

New booking times where a 2-hour window is available:  

• 7-9 AM
• 9-11 AM
• 11 AM – 1 PM
• 1-3 PM
• 3-5 PM
• 5-7 PM

*This assumes that there are bookable 2-hour windows in the booking system. It will not show the windows if there are none available.

Contact

If you have any questions, please reach out to your friendly Chorus account team.