One call does it all: cable operators are spending big money to outfit customer call centers with the latest software. Here's how Time Warner's upgrade for the nation's largest cable system shaved 30 seconds from the average call

Cable World, Nov 5, 2001 by Shirley Brady

The future of customer service might well be in Flushing, Queens.

Earlier this year, Time Warner Cable New York, the nation's largest cable system, upgraded the capacity of its New York call center, which handles more than 50,000 calls daily. The upgrade, which included the installation of new software designed to help customer service representatives handle calls more quickly, took nine days to finish and didn't disrupt the normal work flow, according to the company.

President of Time Warner Cable New York Barry Rosenblum considers the upgrade evidence of the company's ongoing commitment to customer service. "We have deployed a comprehensive array of new technologies to simplify customer interactions," he said in an e-mail. The upgrade cost several million dollars, according to one source familiar with the matter, although Time Warner representatives declined to confirm that figure. The improvements enabled customer service reps to shave 30 seconds off the average three-minute call, according to a spokeswoman at CSG Systems, the customer service company that assisted Time Warner with the upgrade.

Whatever the cost, other MSOs are following suit. Customer service is a key factor in the churn plaguing cable providers, according to Steve Kirkeby, director of telecommunications at research firm J.D. Powers & Associates.

"The biggest component of customer satisfaction is how quickly a cable company resolves problems such as a service outage, a billing inquiry or a programming query," Kirkeby said. What matters most to customers, he says, is "not the length of each call, but how many calls it takes for the matter to be resolved. If it takes more than two calls, you've got an at-risk customer on your hands, one who's very likely to start eyeing other TV providers."

In fact, in its survey of customer satisfaction with cable and satellite TV providers, Powers recently gave the top spot to EchoStar's Dish Network, which is surely bad news for cable operators. EchoStar and Hughes Electronics' DirecTV division have announced plans to merge, which would create a satellite TV colossus that would compete fiercely with cable television for subscribers.

Time Warner's Flushing call center is a key weapon in cable's competitive battle. Housed above a Time Warner Cable payment office in a nondescript shopping mall, the center resembles a huge gymnasium, packed with service reps chattering into headsets. But for many subscribers, it represents their sole link to the cable company.

Before the upgrade, CSRs often got bogged down during calls because they had to access six different systems for information on products such as digital TV and the RoadRunner high-speed service.

CSG, Time Warner Cable New York's customer care and billing provider, worked with software provider Sun Microsystems in tackling the upgrade last April. The center's 600 full- and part-time CSRs were trained on the new system in two-hour sessions, and the whole operation took less than nine days to turn around, with no downtime during the changeover.

Those new technologies meant overhauling the center's customer-support software, giving CSRs a more user-friendly interface with pull-down menus to use; installing a "smart card" technology that enables a CSR to transfer data easily from computer to computer; and faster transmission of information to facilitate tasks ranging from processing requests for new service to adding services and customer billing. Almost 500 workstation-based CPUs were replaced with a network of centrally located servers, and each desktop was outfitted with a SunRay 150 appliance: a 15-inch, flat-panel display linking the CSR to CSG's platform and other back-end systems.

"CSRs need to get data now, not 30 seconds from now," explains Cesar Beltran, Time Warner Cable New York's VP of information technology. "So we pulled in Sun Microsystems and CSG and gave them the challenge of making the center faster, scalable and more robust."

Extending the capabilities of the CSG platform "almost immediately" improved the call center, says Beltran, noting that within two months the CSRs' productivity had improved by more than 35% and the average call time was reduced by 10%. The number of repeat calls by customers to resolve an issue has also decreased, although he declined to say by how much.

"The operational efficiencies from a system administration standpoint are outstanding," says Randall Cardinal, CSG's chief technology officer. "Not only have they improved the efficiency of CSRs and call times, but they have introduced a smart-card environment that can be evoked on any desktop, so the CSR is portable and can work at another workstation or take a session in progress to a manager if needed. That flexibility was not possible before."

CSG, Sun and Time Warner Cable declined to divulge any of the costs involved in the project. The vendors not only expanded Time Warner New York's CSRs' speed and capability in addressing customers' needs--they also made the call center's operations scalable for more complex service offerings, including multiple Internet service providers by the end of this year.