Retrofit Residential Processes to Service Commercial Customers By R Batenburg Cable Systems Expert

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The elusive quest of that business-to-business cash flow from the sale of Cable MSO products has been difficult to complete. The products were created to serve the customer market, and so were the back office processes and procedures, as is the case with the service delivery and support organizations.

In order to serve the SMB customer we must re-tool every aspect of the way we traditionally service a customer, which can help the residential consumer as well. It´s best to look at the end of the work flow and work back to the intention to distribute. Presented below are some very powerful suggestions to help Service Delivery and Support to Marketing and Sales.

1) The business class customer will require a higher service level than a residential customer. They will also require higher performance from the products, higher reliability, shorter response times, narrower appointment windows, different premise wiring techniques and of course the more sophisticated billing reports. Appointment windows must be exact and outside "normal business hours" to reduce disruption to the customer enterprise-regardless of size.

2) The installation of Telephony services is the most intrusive to the customer, with Data being a close second. Disruption to the business due to video install will be much less in most cases. Engineering the processes for a minimally disruptive telephony and data installation can be done with existing procedure - however, the methodologies will not scale and thus ultimately will not be receptive to the potential market of business cases. In short term, special groups of technicians or contractors could be employed to handle start-up volume. An aggressive and iterative approach to modifying the procedures with the goal of developing a scalable process must be the primary goal.

3) Look at the Call Center and the actual order creation. It is essential for the order create group to engage in more extensive gathering and documenting the prospect´s requirements than is traditionally required for a residential client. Again the traditional order intake tools are inadequate to accomplish this task without additional training and the use of more swivel chair processes employing custom point solutions. Short term solution: specialized headcount with specialized training- while concurrently developing systems that will scale.

4) A review of the actual cable plant will be required. Does the capacity exist to service these customers at a reasonable SLA? Marketing and sales will need this information in order to target the "right" prospects and design the "right" offer.

5) Finally look at intention - the desire to enter this business in the first place. Offers, pricing, SLA´s etc. must be designed, socialized and brought to the market. No small task, but the cable vertical is extremely skilled at producing offers and pricing packages, so this is the least of the worries. There is no reason to design offers and pricing should the previous challenges not have a rock solid solution and growth planning.

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