At the Product Forum earlier this month we talked about a new opportunity we’ve identified to significantly reduce reschedules on the day. The idea is to seek active confirmation of appointments by consumers, with unacknowledged appointments being rescheduled. Some service providers have raised concerns about the way we’ve approached this opportunity. So we’ve decided to review our approach, giving you more detail about our thinking on this one and the process we’ll use to make a decision (including asking for your feedback).

What’s happening

We have been investigating ways to improve the efficiency of installation crews by reducing the number of wasted truck rolls, where the crew arrive and no one is home. The idea is to seek active confirmation of appointments by consumers, with unacknowledged appointments being rescheduled. We tested this approach on approximately 1,000 fibre installations over a nine-day period in May 2019 and were excited to see a 4% reduction in on the day reschedules and wasted truck rolls across all service providers as part of our test. 

We acknowledged at the Product Forum meeting we may have been enthusiastic in pushing testing and implementation without first making sure we properly understood the impact on you.

We’ve heard your concerns and we’ve decided to review our approach to the implementation of these improvements.   

What’s the details

We believe improvements like this which reduce reschedules on the day benefit the whole industry. This particular improvement will help to increase the number of completed connections on a day and reduce lead times, which potentially improves customer experience as well as ensuring better utilisation of our techs. 

Some service providers have noted they would look to change their processes if the alternative approach was implemented.

We are keen to understand in more detail what the implications are for you.  We’ve developed a proposed timeframe over which to gather some important data to help us make a decision about this proposal and get feedback from you about the impacts on your business.
 

The proposed timetable is set out below: 

Although there are a number of factors we’ll consider in deciding whether or not to implement this change, you are probably keen to know what test results we believe would favour implementation (i.e. what does ‘good’ look like?). We intend to share this information with you before the proposed start of the test itself (i.e. Stage 4 in the timetable).

Next steps

Please share your feedback on the data gathering and consultation timetable. If you have any feedback about the timetable, please contact your Account Lead or Service Delivery Manager by Friday 30 August. 

We’ll go ahead with the data capture exercise (Stage 2) as planned. If we decide to change the timetable as a result of any feedback, we will let you know before 9 September 2019 (the proposed start of Stage 4).

We’ll publish our view of what ‘good’ test results look like before the end of this week and to ensure full transparency on this initiative, we’ll create a dedicated space on the Chorus Service Provider website in which you’ll find all the information related to this project.

Contact

For any queries please contact your Account Lead or Service Delivery Manager.