Challenge
Founded in 2018, Fibrus is on a mission to bring full fibre broadband to underserved areas of Northern Ireland (NI) and England and has rapidly become a leading broadband provider in these regions. The company is transforming the digital infrastructure, connecting customers who have struggled to get 1Mb download speeds to high-speed reliable broadband with speeds up to 1Gb, levelling up rural communities.
Despite only being in operation for a few years, the company has already reached over 250K homes across Northern Ireland and Cumbria. The company is committed to making full fibre broadband, which it considers the “mains electricity” of the 21st century, accessible and affordable without compromising on quality.
At the heart of Fibrus’ operations is a strong emphasis on customer experience. Stephen Riley is Head of Operations for Fibrus, and he describes how the focus of the company had to rapidly shift to sustain the fast growth: “We’ve been on a journey from building our network to a service centered organisation. We had built the network really well, but we hadn’t built the service element of the business and therefore we had a challenging experience for our customers when things didn’t go to plan.”
NPS, Trustpilot scores, and contacts per customer
At one point, the Trustpilot scores for Fibrus were as low as 1.7, indicating customer dissatisfaction. “We needed to understand what the root cause of those issues were, and how we would tackle those issues and start to build the service element of the business”, says Riley.
Jon Hall is Customer Experience Manager, and his team is responsible for key customer metrics like transactional Net Promoter Score (tNPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Trustpilot scores. Jon has worked in service management for more than 20 years, and he knows that one of the biggest challenges when it comes to analysing customer feedback is making sense of a vast amount of data.
“In previous workplaces, when it came to reporting on and making sense of customer feedback, it’s always been a sort of hotchpotch of mixed reports from different sources, not all tied up”, explains Jon. “And so, there was a lot of manual work that was going into doing the analysis and cross-checking for yourself”.
On top of the low Trustpilot scores, there were two other metrics that were important for Fibrus to improve: contacts per customer and NPS.
We wanted more than just survey capability. We wanted something that would provide insights and add value in terms of how we create a strategy which would improve our customer experience.
Stephen Riley, Head of Operations
More than a survey tool
It was not only a matter of capturing feedback from customers, it was also about gaining insights that could then improve on their customer experience. “We wanted to really pull all the feedback into one place”, says Stephen. “Get some really good quality insights that would give us quick wins.”
Fibrus needed a solution that could help them understand, assess, and improve the experience across the full customer journey – post-sale, post-installation, post technical support, post customer service, and post cease. “We wanted more than just survey capability”, continues Stephen. “We wanted something that would provide insights and add value in terms of how we create a strategy which would improve our customer experience.”
Solution
When seeking for a solution that could help Fibrus not only capture customer feedback, but also understand what to do next to improve on the customer experience, Stephen found Lumoa.
“It was a bit of a wow factor”, he says, “because I’ve seen a lot of platforms previously, but they are very basic. They just give you the high-level information – your NPS score, your CSAT score, and so on. What I saw with Lumoa was completely different. It provides the impact that different topics are having on your business. So, if you do this, your score will improve by this. It was really impressive, and it saved us a lot of time.”
“My first impression on seeing Lumoa was that it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for all my career”, continues Jon. “Lumoa has all the feedback sources in one place, all the voice of the customer that I want. It is refreshing. At that point, I knew that by choosing Lumoa, Fibrus had made the decision to really prioritise customer experience”.
Improving communication for installs
One of the insights that Fibrus was able to get thanks to Lumoa is about communication during the installation process. Fibrus uses subcontractors for installations: the customer orders their broadband package, Fibrus sends the order to one of their contract partners, and they complete the install. This could take any time between 5 to 30 days. It was reason for frustration for customers, who were then contacting Fibrus multiple times to chase for an update or complain.
After finding out about this thanks to Lumoa’s insights, they implemented an appointment process that assigned specific dates for contractors to complete the installation job and proactively communicated those appointments to customers.
“Our appointment process has had a massive impact on customer satisfaction. It improved our NPS scores and reduced contact volumes in our contact center”, confirms Stephen.
Lumoa is exactly what I’ve been looking for all my career. It has all the feedback sources in one place, all the voice of the customer that I want.
Jon Hall, Customer Experience Manager
Going the extra mile
Lumoa also helped Fibrus with a customer-centric shift within the organisation. Since all voice of customer is now in one place, the company has started an initiative called “Going the extra mile”.
“The idea behind this incentive”, explains Jon, “is that if you do something brilliant for a customer, to the point they will be mentioning you and shout about what you did, we keep track of it. And after so many mentions, there is a financial reward. This has also encouraged everyone – up to senior management level – and it has sparked some real enthusiasm about delivering that customer experience that we’re after.”
Result
Fibrus has seen remarkable improvements in all the key customer experience metrics since taking Lumoa into use.
All CX metrics improved
“In 8 months, we reduced contacts per customer by almost 30%”, explains Stephen. “That’s a massive reduction. From an NPS perspective, we started at -28 and we are now at +56. It’s not only been one action, and it’s an indication of the journey we’ve been on, which has all being driven by the feedback we’ve received.”
NPS – from -28 to +56
Contacts per customer – reduced by 30%
TrustPilot score – from 1.7 to 3.9
Jon stresses how important Lumoa is for his work routine: “I use Lumoa on a daily basis. It’s my first port of call every morning. I review how the scores have changed from the previous day, look for any anomalies or challenges, and concentrate my efforts based on the analysis.”
Fibrus has also integrated Trustpilot reviews into Lumoa, and their score is now at 3.9, up from 1.7 less than a year ago. “We also pulled Trustpilot competitors reviews into Lumoa, and that does a few things for us”, continues Stephen. “It provides us with a benchmark that we can look at long term and short term, to see if we are getting better or worse against our competitors. And we can look at the different areas where they’re doing well and maybe we’re not doing so well, and viceversa. It just helps us keep ahead of the competition.”
The biggest value Lumoa has delivered is that it quantifies the impact, it helps us drive a business case around a specific action, which is essential when you are growing as fast as we are.
Stephen Riley, Head of Operations
“Based on our own research”, says Jon, “we are in the top 10 providers in the UK, and I think that is a testament to the good work we’re doing. I know that senior leadership reports monthly back to our sponsors, and one of the highlights is the success we’ve had with customer experience, and the fact that all our KPIs are improving”.
Customer experience as a business driver
The value Fibrus is getting from Lumoa goes beyond the improvement of all key customer experience metrics: “We are a very data-driven business, so any decision we make needs to have a solid logic and data to back it up”, confirms Stephen. “The biggest value Lumoa has delivered is that it quantifies the impact, it helps us drive a business case around a specific action, which is essential when you are growing as fast as we are.”
“In previous roles, we’d have this huge Excel spreadsheets and we’d have to manually search for common themes, which is archaic”, concludes Jon. “Now with Lumoa, all of that is done for me, I don’t have to even lift a finger. I would go as far as saying that if you are not using Lumoa, you’re not listening to the voice of your customers. And that is a key element for the success of not only my department, but all departments. Regardless of whether you’re in finance, whether you’re in HR, it doesn’t matter. You need to understand what your customers are saying and how your department impacts that. Lumoa allows you to do that.”
