Reliable internet access enables rural Americans to access critical telehealth services, remote work and e-learning opportunities that benefit them and their communities.
Yet rural internet providers often face unique challenges that can make service delivery difficult. Below, we go over some of the most common obstacles rural internet providers face and tips to help overcome them.
What are some of the most common challenges rural internet providers face?
Rural internet providers face some unique challenges compared to ISPs in major city centers. A few examples include:
- Expensive truck rolls that eat into your bottom line
- Difficulty finding local talent to staff call centers and other business areas
- Deployment challenges
We dive into each of these more below.
Expensive truck rolls that eat into your bottom line
Truck rolls refer to deploying a team to a customer’s home or place of business to resolve an ongoing issue. They can create unnecessary business expenses that cause your broadband company to hemorrhage money.
Over three-fourths of rural Americans now have high-speed internet access. However, increased demand for internet services also increases demand for tech support. The business cost of truck rolls can add up quickly. Your company has to pay for travel, labor and wait times for each truck roll.
While this kind of preventable spend is never ideal, it can especially create hardships for rural internet service providers, since customers tend to live in less densely populated areas, increasing travel time to sites that are spread out.
Truck rolls can quickly eat into your bottom line, but they also increase wait times for customers. This can lead to increased frustration and negatively impact key contact center metrics for your business.
Difficulty finding local talent to staff call centers and other business areas
According to the National Governors Association, over half of people in rural areas have no postsecondary education. This can create a shortage of skilled labor, making it difficult for companies to hire qualified talent in call centers, to work as technicians, or in other critical areas, affecting service quality.
Companies struggle not only to source local talent, but also to hire and onboard people from more densely populated areas, since many people believe rural communities offer fewer opportunities to grow their careers.
The talent shortage for rural internet providers can mean fewer agents to handle increased support requests, making it difficult to resolve customer support tickets in a timely manner, which can increase average handle time (AHT) and affect service quality. This can create a poor customer service experience, leading to customer frustration and the potential for customer churn.
Deployment challenges
A lack of rural talent, combined with geographic conditions and limited infrastructure, can create deployment challenges for rural internet providers. For example, rural mountainous areas can experience extreme temperatures, making it unsafe to deploy teams to lay out fiber cables or other infrastructure.
The terrain of the mountains themselves can also create deployment challenges. For example, if your company relies on satellites to provide internet services, the signal may be blocked, disrupting service delivery. All of this can create significant delays for your business and impact service quality.
How can rural internet providers overcome challenges while providing a strong broadband customer experience?
Now that you know some of the most common challenges rural internet providers face, how can you overcome them while creating a positive broadband customer experience? A few key steps your business can take include:
- Leverage virtual troubleshooting
- Develop a strong agent onboarding program
- Partner with local post-secondary institutions
- Consider applying for government grants
Let’s go over each of these in a little more detail.
Leverage virtual troubleshooting
Virtual troubleshooting can help reduce costly truck rolls and provide the fast ticket resolution customers expect. Tools such as remote video support help agents accurately diagnose and troubleshoot issues without deploying a team to your customer’s physical address.
Live video support streamlines communication between customers and agents, since agents can see exactly what the customer sees, enabling faster diagnosis. It also facilitates smoother troubleshooting, since agents can provide step-by-step guidance, draw on the screen and even extract text on a device to create a more visual walkthrough for customers.
All of this can help improve your first-call resolution rate and lower business expenses, especially if your company can reduce the number of deployments to a customer’s physical location. It also creates a more personalized customer service experience, which can be critical for customer retention.
Develop a strong agent onboarding program
A strong contact center agent onboarding program is critical to the success of your call center and staffing local talent. Your onboarding program can help reduce turnover and increase employee engagement, which can be critical to providing strong customer service.
However, many companies rely on manually created training manuals and physical devices that can quickly become outdated, which can undermine agent confidence and create frustration for both agents and customers.
This is where tools like a strong knowledge base can make a huge difference. A knowledge base that dynamically updates can be leveraged across your omnichannel customer support strategy to ensure agents always have the most up-to-date information right at their fingertips.
Additionally, consider leveraging contact center automation technology to improve agent efficiency rather than replace agents. This can help your contact center resolve issues faster without sacrificing that critical human touch.
Partner with local post-secondary institutions
Another potential solution to staffing challenges in rural areas is to partner with regional community colleges or other post-secondary institutions. Many community colleges offer customer service agent training programs, and partnering with these institutions can give students valuable hands-on job experience beyond the classroom.
Additionally, it helps you develop the skilled workers you need right in your own community, creating a potential hiring pipeline when you need to fill open roles. In turn, a path to local employment opportunities can also help keep skilled workers in communities that need them.
Consider applying for government grants
The geographic challenges presented by rural areas can eat into your company’s bottom line. However, government grants, such as the USDA’s Community Connect Grant, help fund organizations deploying broadband in rural communities, helping ease some of those business costs.
Additionally, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has a Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program for Tribal Organizations and Native Corporations seeking to deploy broadband internet on Tribal lands. Beyond the federal government, your organization may want to look for state government grants you may be eligible for.
When applying for grants, carefully review eligibility requirements and guidelines before completing the application. You’ll also want to consider gathering any necessary documentation and review timelines to ensure your grant application is complete and submitted by the deadline. The U.S. government has a Grants Learning Center for organizations to search for government grants and learn about the grant lifecycle (including a “Getting Started” checklist).
Rural internet providers can overcome common challenges
Rural internet providers are a critical lifeline for rural areas. Internet connectivity can fuel e-learning, helping communities achieve better educational outcomes and more employment opportunities. It can also help people access telehealth services to communities in need.
Yet, rural internet providers can face many challenges that make providing a positive broadband customer experience difficult. However, by following some of the recommendations in this guide, your business can better navigate these issues without compromising service quality.
Are you a rural internet provider looking for more information on how to reduce truck rolls while providing quality customer support? Our remote video support guide dives into how you can provide accurate, live troubleshooting without deploying a team to a customer’s physical address. Grab the free guide today.
FAQs
What are some of the biggest obstacles that rural internet providers face?
Rural internet providers can face a variety of challenges such as difficulties with deployment, a shortage of local talent and rising business costs.
Setting up broadband infrastructure in remote communities is expensive. How do we ease some of the financial strain for our business?
Broadband businesses may want to consider leveraging video chat customer support, which allows agents to provide remote troubleshooting without your company having to deploy a crew to a customer’s home or business. Additionally, you may want to research federal grants for broadband providers operating in rural communities.
It’s hard to recruit staff to move to remote areas. How can we find local talent?
Rural internet service providers will want to ensure they have a strong onboarding program to set agents up for success. Additionally, you may want to consider partnering with vocational schools or community colleges in your area to build a pipeline of local talent.
How can we find grants that our business or organization may be eligible for?
The U.S. government has created a Grants Learning Center that not only helps you research potential grant opportunities, but walks you through the grant lifecycle, from application to reporting and closeout.
