Openreach boosts full fibre sign-ups with self-service platform

Openreach has revealed its new online self-service platform has reduced missed appointments by 30 percent, helping save thousands of hours in wasted engineer visits, and boosted numbers installing a full fibre service.

Change My Appointment, launched in April, lets customers be in charge and connect with Openreach’s to book or change engineer appointments through a live interactive calendar, allowing bookings up to three months in advance and cancellation up to a day before.

Previously, customers could only amend appointments via a text service with limited date options.

They would text a preferred date then have to wait for a confirmation text from Openreach; due to the delay in some cases the requested date wasn’t available.

Research data showed frustration with the process led many to miss appointments, avoid rescheduling, or cancel their orders entirely.

Openreach’s new platform is the key innovation in a customer experience programme which has boosted full fibre sign-ups by reducing missed appointments, as more than half of those who miss appointments go on to cancel their orders.

This reduction has led to an estimated 20,000 customers getting connected to full fibre since the programme launched.

Prior to the introduction of the platform, customers had to call their provider to change appointments, which was time-consuming for both sides.

The new platform reduces the effort for both customers and provider, and saves the time customer service teams spend dealing with appointment amendments.

The platform was built in collaboration with Adobe Experience Manager sites and AI driven customer service platform ContactEngine and took a year to develop and build.

Chris Herbert, Director of Customer Service at Openreach, said: “It’s the first time Openreach has designed a system like this for end customers and, initially, there was some scepticism from our CP partners about a network wholesaler having this level of interaction with their own customers – but we’ve worked hard to win their trust, and the success of this platform is testament to that.”