Giving customer support agents a better toolbox
Delivering broadband network technology is incredibly complex. From the hardware and software that form the network’s infrastructure to the router that sits in the end user’s home or office, there are countless opportunities for glitches that can interrupt the consumer’s experience. And when they do happen, it often falls on the shoulders of an ISP’s customer support agent to troubleshoot and fix the issue – fast! That’s a heavy burden.
AXON Networks has
designed the new user interface (UI) for its AXON AnyNetTM Orchestration
Platform to give those support agents the most relevant information they need in
the easiest-to-understand way, along with the guidance to diagnose and fix the
issue quickly. Or, in the words of David Hallas, AXON’s Solution Director and
Product Owner of AXON AnyNet Orchestrator, to “give customer support agents a
better toolbox.”
David HallasSolution Director
“Our orchestration platform has been designed to ingest and intelligently analyze more than 25,000 data points per device at any given moment, present relevant diagnostics information to the agent in a guided way, and recommend actions to fix an issue,” he says. “In other words, tell the agent, ‘Here’s the problem, and here’s what to do to fix it.’"
David says the
amount of data the platform is processing isn’t as important as its intelligent
interpretation of that data and the suggested fixes it presents to the agent.
Then it’s the job of the UI to help guide the agent to a solution for the
customer. Together, the platform and the design of the UI can reduce the time
the agent needs to analyze a support case and troubleshoot an issue.
Flexible views and flows
The AXON AnyNet
Orchestrator UI is a modular responsive dashboard. The dashboard has been
designed and customized to match ISP workflow and the data it wants to track. Instead
of requiring an ISP and its customer support agents to conform to a static UI
dictated by the platform, AXON provides a dashboard tailored to what its
support agents are familiar with.
That’s accomplished using
modular construction and customizable widgets, with easy-to-understand graphics
and highlighted text that calls out potential issues and suggests solutions,
all with the goal of helping the agents resolve user issues quickly, reduce
call times, eliminate unnecessary truck rolls, and increase customer
satisfaction.
“Flexibility and
scalability are key to the power of AXON Orchestrator,” says Duncan Chase, Creative
Director at AXON and designer of the UI. “Most CPE management platforms don’t
have as much data integrated into their management platform – agents have to actively
search for some of the data they need – and they haven’t been designed to be as
user friendly. Giving our customers’ agents flexible views and flows helps them
do their jobs better.”
Duncan ChaseCreative Director
Another strength of
the AXON Orchestrator UI, according to Duncan, is the agents’ ability to
receive data and intelligence from end users’ routers, regardless of whether
those routers are AXON routers or devices provided by a third party. That gives
the agent a more holistic view of the platform and the CPE it’s monitoring. Other
providers’ solutions tend to focus on analyzing data only from their own
devices.
Smart CPE
management
“Being able to
provide access to so much real-time, integrated data – as well as the insight
to act on it – in such a unique and customized way isn’t something you see in a
traditional CPE management platform,” says David. “We see our AXON AnyNet Orchestration
platform and its easy-to-use UI as part of the evolution of CPE management. You
could even call it a new product category, the ‘smart management platform’.”
As the platform continues
to evolve, there will be more machine learning and intelligence built into it,
David says, along with an app that can alert the end user directly if an issue
arises. Think of that as ‘proactive customer service.’
David says the
platform is perfect for smaller and medium-sized ISPs looking for deep,
actionable insight into their devices. The new customizable UI will be rolled
out to all AXON customers later this summer. It’s been in testing as a demo
platform with some existing customers and the feedback has been very positive.
“One of our
customers told us that previously, almost 98 percent of their truck rolls came
back with non-defective routers,” said David. “In other words, those truck
rolls didn’t need to happen. By giving a support agent fast, easy access to the
information they need to diagnose and fix a customer problem – versus staying
on the phone and talking through the issue with the customer and eventually
scheduling a truck roll anyway because they couldn’t find a solution – we’re helping
the ISP improve the quality of experience for the customer and, ultimately,
reducing churn.”
For more information, visit: https://axon-networks.
Media Contact:
John O’Malley
The Guyer Group
585.261.5899
john@guyergroup.com