How regional ISPs can streamline broadband and mobile bundle support

Bundling broadband and mobile is now the future of successful regional ISPs. Rural internet providers face stiff competition from larger brands, and streamlined broadband and mobile bundle support is critical to differentiating your brand, improving key business metrics and reducing the risk of customer churn.

So, how can you ensure your regional ISP provides effective tech support? After all, new mobile services can often require teams to hire additional staff or take time off for extensive training, and as a smaller service provider, that’s time and staffing capabilities that you don’t have. The good news is that extensive retraining or hiring additional staff may not be necessary. Below, we cover the benefits of bundling broadband and mobile services, along with tips for creating a positive customer service experience.

Why are regional service providers (RSPs) offering a broadband and mobile bundle option?

There are numerous advantages for rural internet providers and other regional broadband companies to start offering a broadband and mobile bundle option. A few examples include:

• Increase average revenue per user (ARPU)

• Reduce customer churn

• Differentiate rural internet service providers from the competition

We go into these in more detail below. 

Increase average revenue per user (ARPU)

Average revenue per user, or ARPU, refers to the average income per customer that your business receives over a specific period of time. Research shows two-thirds of Americans would consider bundling subscription services from a single provider, meaning that offering a broadband and mobile bundle can be a powerful way to improve your company’s bottom line. 

ARPU is one of many key metrics your business should be tracking, helping you gain insight into your company’s performance and growth. However, many telecom businesses are struggling to see meaningful improvement in ARPU. Additionally, if you only offer a fixed broadband service, it limits your ability to upsell and crosssell to current customers, which can impact business growth. 

By offering a mobile bundle you can upsell current customers to additional services. This is a powerful opportunity since it’s much easier to upsell to current customers versus acquiring new ones. In fact, research shows you have as much as a 70% chance of selling to an existing customer, whereas the same study found that with new customers, your chances are only as high as 20%.

Reduce customer churn

Another impact of offering broadband and mobile support is the reduced risk of customer churn. These days, more customers want to manage their digital services in one place.

In fact, Horowitz Research found that over half of U.S. customers want to manage their various subscription services within a single platform. Why? Most customers are experiencing “app fatigue” and exhaustion from multiple apps and service providers for every subscription. In short, more is not better. Customers want one bill to rule them all — with their digital subscriptions all in one central place.

This means that if you offer a home and internet bundle, you can minimize the risk of customer churn. Additionally, it means you have the potential to capture new customers looking for a more streamlined service experience. 

Differentiate rural internet service providers from the competition

Rural areas are experiencing renewed growth as more people choose to move there, increasing not only demand for services but also competition from rival businesses. The rise of remote work and lower costs of living have made rural areas particularly desirable for young professionals and families. Many of these regions also offer lucrative incentives to attract people to move there.

For example, West Virginia offers remote workers $12,000 to move to the state, with free access to coworking spaces, and an additional program targeted towards veterans. The median home price is around $249,000, much lower than California’s, which sits just shy of $800,000.

Not only has this driven an increase in population, but also a demand for reliable broadband and mobile. This, in turn, has increased competition. More companies are entering the market, such as Elon Musk's Starlink, pledging fast, affordable internet in remote and rural areas. This can make it difficult for regional service providers to stay competitive.

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This is where offering a broadband and mobile bundle can help. Since customers increasingly want a single bill for digital services, your company can tap into this by offering mobile and broadband bundles for new rural residents seeking fast, reliable mobile and internet services to support remote work, home and entrepreneurial pursuits.

How can you provide effective broadband and mobile bundle support?

Now that you know some of the advantages of bundling, how can you streamline your broadband and mobile bundle support? Some best practices include:

• Use virtualization

• Leverage contact center automation to enhance agent performance

• Ensure your knowledge base is up to date

• Provide customer self-service options

We dive into each of these in more detail below.

Use virtualization

Virtualization, or virtual tech support, provides digital emulators to contact center agents that mimic the functionality of customers’ physical devices. Access to a library of virtual devices and tutorial support for smartphones and feature phones can help your agents provide fast and accurate customer service without having to take time off for lengthy training sessions.

​With virtualization, your agents can mimic the operability of a physical device. However, unlike physical devices, virtual devices update dynamically, ensuring your agent has access to the latest features to help customers troubleshoot and set up their new smartphone.

This not only helps you provide a more personalized customer service experience, but it also helps agents more accurately diagnose and resolve support tickets. This can improve your net promoter score (NPS) and provide potential cost savings, since you don't have to maintain an expensive library of physical devices for each agent.

Leverage contact center automation to enhance agent performance

Rather than use it to replace humans, leverage contact center automation to improve agent efficiency. Your human agents have a critical role to play in the customer experience, so using technology to help them serve more people can help your brand stand out from the competition and deliver a positive customer service experience.

​Many companies use technology such as conversational AI chatbots to replace customer service agents, but this is the wrong approach. Your customers still overwhelmingly prefer to speak to a real person regarding a service issue. In fact, research shows nearly three-fourths of customers prefer speaking to a human rather than a chatbot for a service-related issue.

The key to successfully integrating contact center automation isn’t to replace people, but to amplify that human touch. For example, you can use technology such as AI to improve your agent onboarding program, so agents can hit the ground running and deliver effective support faster. Or, your agents can send interactive tutorials from your knowledge base via SMS to help customers troubleshoot from the comfort of their home.

At the end of the day, good customer service is about giving customers what they want, and the data overwhelmingly shows that they want to speak to a real person at your call center. However, many businesses are using automation to replace agents, creating potential friction in the customer experience. By using contact center automation to augment human performance, you can differentiate your brand in an increasingly crowded market.

Ensure your knowledge base is up to date

Your knowledge base can make or break the tech support experience. A reliable self-service knowledge base can help ensure your agents can diagnose and troubleshoot issues more quickly and effectively, which can play a critical role in your customer retention rate.

Traditional customer service knowledge bases often consist of text-based manuals that quickly become outdated with each new smartphone model release or software update. Updating these guides manually is time-consuming and can get pushed to the back burner as other business priorities take precedence.  

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This can create a lot of unnecessary friction for both agents and customers. Agents may find that the troubleshooting materials they use are no longer accurate, making it harder to diagnose issues and guide customers to a resolution, undermining their confidence and creating a poor customer service experience. This can, in turn, increase the risk for customer churn, since seven out of 10 customers say customer service is a critical factor in staying loyal to a brand.

A strong self-service knowledge base can make a huge difference. A strong knowledge base should update dynamically so your agents always have accurate troubleshooting information. It should also leverage formats like video and interactive tutorials, which are better for learning than plain-text articles. A good knowledge base not only can help create a better tech support experience, but also improve agent NPS, decrease average handle time and improve your first-call resolution rate.

Differentiate your brand with broadband and mobile bundle support

Launching a new broadband and mobile bundle can be a critical way for rural internet providers and regional ISPs to stand out in increasingly crowded markets. However, you must offer strong broadband and mobile bundle support, as customer service is a key driver of brand loyalty. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can create a more streamlined broadband and mobile bundle support experience without extensive training or additional staff.

Are you looking for more help taking your broadband support to the next level? Download our free white paper to learn how you can use customer support to differentiate your brand from the competition.