Suddenlink To Subs: How Are We Doing?

‘Net Promoter Score’ Data Is Key To Service Efforts

By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 8/9/2010 12:01:00 AM

At Suddenlink Communications, being named “most improved” cable operator by J.D. Power & Associates two years in a row is all well and good.

What really gets the St. Louisbased midsized MSO’s collective heart racing is its “NPS” ranking.

That is short for Net Promoter Score, a tool the company uses as both a loyalty and customersatisfaction gauge for its nearly 1.3 million subscribers.

Simply put, NPS is determined by customers who rate whether they would recommend Suddenlink service to a friend on a scale of one to 10 (10 being the highest recommendation).

NPS sprung from a business book published in 2006: The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld. According to Reichheld, the key to customer loyalty is elevating customer metrics to the same level and importance as financial metrics. Companies like Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Amazon, eBay and General Electric have all adopted Reichheld’s techniques.

‘HOW LIKELY ARE YOU …’
Suddenlink began using NPS in 2007, asking a single question: “How likely are you to recommend Suddenlink to someone you know?” Customers that rated Suddenlink a nine or 10 were considered “promoters,” with scores of seven to eight ranking that customer as “passive” and one to six making them “detractors.”

The idea is to have a lot more promoters than detractors in your customer base.

According to Suddenlink chief operating officer Tom McMillin, once detractors are identified, there are programs in place to address their problems and turn them first into passives and ultimately into promoters.

That’s just what Suddenlink is doing.

Between Suddenlink’s first NPS survey in mid 2007 and its latest (covering the 12 months from July 2009 to June 2010), the operator has improved the percentage of customers that rate it either a nine or a 10 from 54% to 59%; decreased the percentage of detractors from 26% to 16%; and raised its NPS score (total promoters minus detractors) from 28 to 43. “Clearly, our efforts are resonating with our customers,” Suddenlink CEO Jerry Kent said.

Suddenlink believes its adherence to NPS has not only led to strong improvements in customer satisfaction — evident by the J.D. Power rankings — but also has led to reductions in churn and repeat service calls, and increases in revenue and customer growth (revenue was up 6.8% between Q109 and Q110 and revenue generating units rose 7.3% in the same period).

Without divulging all of the company’s customer-service secrets, Suddenlink senior vice president of customer experience Gibbs Jones said Suddenlink views the NPS score as an overall barometer of how the company is doing on the customer-service front.

Data from NPS, combined with that from J.D. Power and other sources — like transactional surveys from Satmetrix, which are initiated as a result of a specific order, installation or service call — have helped shaped a number of initiatives at Suddenlink, Jones said. Those include Careerlink (to enhance a technician’s knowledge and skills); Suddenlink ETA Direct (which places a handheld appointment manager with each field technician to enhance efficiency); Project Imagine (a $350 million multiyear infrastructure rebuild program); and improvements to its online customer help site.

The data also led to a stronger focus on smaller issues. For example, as a result of the surveys, Suddenlink has redoubled efforts to remind technicians to wear “booties” over their shoes when entering a customer’s home or offi ces and vacuuming up any mess before they leave.

“Those may seem like small steps, but they have prompted a number of customers to write us and praise the attention to detail,” Jones said.

Suddenlink started Careerlink in the second half of 2008 to help all its technicians achieve Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers certification, a process that was completed on July 23. To date, more than 1,500 Suddenlink engineers and other field personnel have earned more than 3,000 SCTE certifications.

SCTE certification does more than create better trained and skilled employees. It also saves money. Suddenlink estimates it has saved millions of dollars through meaningful reductions in repeat service calls and customer churn.

Between the end of 2008 and 2009 — the first full calendar year with Careerlink in place — Suddenlink realized a 10% reduction in repeat service calls and a 4% reduction in churn, it reported.

McMillin said the company spends more than 250,000 hours per year in tech training. The average call center agent undergoes four to six weeks of training before speaking with customers.

Suddenlink also revamped its customer help website to display information by ZIP code, service category and most queried topic, a move that helped triple customer use of the site in the first month the enhancements were unveiled.

The operator added more than 200 customer-support employees during the economic downturn; employed better screening methods for new customer support workers; and made better software and troubleshooting tools available to help technicians do their jobs better and more efficiently.

Late last year, Suddenlink began deploying Suddenlink ETA Direct, a handheld appointmentmanagement system that greatly improved efficiency. Between December 2009 and June 2010, the technology (from TOA Technologies) helped increase the time techs spent with customers (as opposed to driving or doing administrative tasks) by nearly 14%; increased the percentage of jobs completed on the same day they were scheduled by almost 9%; and increased the percentage of ontime appointments by nearly 5%.

The company also is completing final steps to test the technology’s customer notification and survey capabilities in several locations. Within a month or two, Suddenlink hopes to be able to provide CSRs and front counter staff with better visibility into a technician’s estimated time of arrival, so they can provide that information to customers.

AUTOMATING ETA
In the next three to four months, Suddenlink hopes to roll out an automated and online functionality to allow customers to check a technician’s ETA on their own.

Project Imagine was kicked off in 2006 and has helped Suddenlink boost its high-speed Internet offerings and increased channel capacity. When the $350 million project is completed in 2012, Suddenlink will have the capacity for about 100 HD channels, and DOCSIS 3.0 will be available in 90% of its footprint. Suddenlink already has a high-speed Internet service available in parts of Texas that tops out at 107 Megabits per second, the fastest in the country at the moment.

Suddenlink also pays attention to the negative comments it has received among more than 30,000 customer responses.

Any customer who provides a negative rating on a Satmetrix survey receives a proactive call from the company, and steps are taken to address any lingering issues.

“It all comes down to taking better care of your customers than your competitors,” CEO Kent said. “If you do that, you win.”

NPS ON THE RISE
Between its first NPS survey in mid-2007 and its latest covering July 2009 to June 2010, Suddenlink has:
• Increased the percentage of promoters (customers who rate it a 9 or 10) from 54% to 59%.
• Decreased the percentage of detractors (those rating Suddenlink a 6 or less) from 26% to 16%.
• Increased its NPS score from 28 to 43.
SOURCE: Suddenlink

ETA DIRECT IMPACT
Since putting handheld wireless appointment managers into field techs’ hands in December 2009, Suddenlink has:
• Increased the amount of time techs spend with customers (rather than driving or completing administrative tasks) by nearly 14%.
• Increased the percentage of jobs completed the same day as scheduled by almost 9%.
• Increased the percentage of on-time appointments by nearly 5%.
SOURCE: Suddenlink