At the heart of your customer service operation

Service Products

3 Introduction

4 Presenting you with exciting new business opportunities (temporary lines and lines to non served premises)

4 Making first impressions count (number portability)

4 Empowering you through information (dialogue services and keeping customers informed messages)

5 An engineering workforce to call your own (where you want us, nationwide)

5 Minimising missed appointments (managed engineer re-appointing)

5 Turning negative situations into positive ones (LLU line testing)

6 Taking responsibility for project management (outsourcing options)

6 Measuring performance like never before (management reporting)

6 Safeguarding your assets (novations)

7 Automatic refunds if we don’t live up to our promises (Service Level Agreements)

7 Matching responses to business criticality (care level options)

7 Conclusion

Contents

Helping you to differentiate your business on customer service

In just two short years, we’ve made huge improvements to our access network and to the quality of service we provide. You and your customers should now be realising the benefits of these improvements.

Over the same period, we’ve been developing our Service Products portfolio, which we now feel certain can add even more value to your customer service operation, enabling you to differentiate your offering in the marketplace.

For example, you can pursue exciting new business opportunities, impress new customers by arranging for them to keep their existing numbers, empower your people through information and utilise our engineering workforce to serve you and your customers anywhere in the country.

We can manage engineer re-appointing for you on WLR3 lines, and you can request special fault investigations on LLU lines. For large orders, our professional services portfolio includes project services. You can even take advantage of a powerful online management reporting tool.

There’s also support for the transition of assets, along with automatic refunds if we don’t live up to our service level agreement promises. Finally, we offer you a choice of care levels to match the criticality of your customers’ communications.

Service Products from Openreach are about providing your customers with what they really want – a complete, high quality service wrap that can lead to increased loyalty and sustainable organic revenue growth going forward. In short, they’re about your future, and hopefully your future with us.

Teresa WrightGeneral Manager, Service Products, Openreach

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Presenting you with exciting new business opportunities

Any opportunity to increase sales has to be worth serious consideration.

On your behalf, Openreach can now provision temporary lines to construction site offices and ships in dock. We can also provision temporary lines for everything from wedding marquees, to large scale events and exhibitions, such as county shows, fashion shows, sporting events, pop concerts and political party conferences.

We can also provision permanent lines for you at sites like electricity sub-stations, where cabling needs to be protected from high voltages. The same applies to cabling running to homes adjacent to such sites.

Not forgetting, of course, the fast growing number of permanent public sites with dot matrix signs, like bus shelters, that indicate bus arrival times to passengers.

Making first impressions count

First impressions count, especially with new customers. When signing up for your service from another Communications Provider who is contracted with another network operator, they will expect to keep the geographic and non-geographic numbers (eg 0800 and 0845) that their friends, family and business associates are already familiar with. The number portability process should allow you to arrange this for the overwhelming majority of new customers.

Empowering you through information

The faster, more efficiently and effectively you can deal with customer queries, the better; especially when they’re contacting you about an order or a fault. Openreach empowers you in both respects. There’s no need to call us and then call the customer back.

You can call up the information you require online, while you’re actually speaking to them on the phone. With WLR3, you don’t even have to do that. The latest order progression and fault resolution information is automatically ‘pushed’ to your screen, enabling you to proactively inform customers what’s what, instead of having to adopt a purely reactive stance.

But that’s not the end of WLR3’s powerful functionality. It’s only the beginning. You can reactivate accidentally ceased lines quickly. Real time information provides your sales and support staff with the ability (and the confidence) to give customers meaningful answers during the course of a conversation, instead of having to call them back later.

Access to improved information about customer inventories when pitching for new business is yet another bonus, as it will enable you to develop a better understanding of the services that those customers are actually using and thus tailor your proposals accordingly.

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An engineering workforce to call your own

You can call on the unrivalled skills and experience of Openreach’s 20,000+ engineering workforce, thereby enabling you to serve customers virtually wherever they live or work around the country.

But did you know that those same engineers can take you beyond the Network Terminating Point. You can, for example, employ them to run extension wiring and fit extension sockets in customers’ homes; to run cabling and connect up equipment at business premises; and to provision all manner of temporary lines.

What’s more, you needn’t be limited by our standard working hours. If, for instance, a business customer wants to have their new cabling installed overnight or at the weekend, you can arrange it with Openreach on their behalf and charge them accordingly.

Minimising missed appointments

Missed engineer appointments are a constant concern for you, for your customers and for Openreach.

While WLR3 provides you with access to our engineer workbook, enabling you to directly book, re-book and cancel appointments online, even this advanced functionality hasn’t eliminated the problem of the customer not being at the address when an engineer visits.

That’s why we’ve introduced a managed re-appointment service for WLR3. If you opt for this service, Openreach will contact your customer directly and take full responsibility for arranging the re-appointment.

Turning negative situations into positive ones

If one of your customers is experiencing difficulties with an LLU line and our tests indicate that the Openreach network is not at fault, you can ask us to conduct a detailed investigation on their behalf.

While there can be no absolute guarantees that this work will result in a fix, it often does. Even if it doesn’t, it will prove conclusively whether or not the problem is within Openreach’s remit.

Our engineer will start their investigation at your customer’s premises, by testing the line with their equipment unplugged. The cause is often something as straightforward as an incorrectly positioned filter, or a problem with internal, customer-owned wiring.

Or it might be that the engineer can find a better pair on the cable back to the exchange, or that third party equipment at the exchange is malfunctioning.

If the fault turns out to be our responsibility, you can rest assured that we will fix it and that there will be no charge for the investigation. If it’s not down to us, the engineer will usually have enough time within their allocated slot to restore the customer’s service.

In this way, a negative becomes a positive, because, in the customer’s eyes, you are seen as doing everything you possibly can to get them up and running again; including, crucially, sending an experienced engineer out to investigate.

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Taking responsibility for project management

If you’ve won a large order but are concerned about having adequate project management resources, or if you need to outsource this kind of work because you don’t have the skills in-house, we can take care of it for you.

You can rely on Openreach to oversee a programme of orders for a single customer at any number of their sites. We will bring all the work together for you, as opposed to treating each order as if it were a separate job. We will also provide you with a single point of contact and regular progress updates.

An experienced Openreach project manager will brief assigned engineers at the outset, who will subsequently provide continuity on the ground. Your Openreach project manager can also proactively manage appointment co-ordination, which in itself should drastically reduce the potential for unproductive engineering visits, associated delays and unnecessary costs.

Measuring performance like never before

Performance statistics don’t mean a great deal per se, unless you can drill down into them and manipulate them to produce answers to your questions. It would also be handy if you could be absolutely certain that your stats were completely up to date.

Online management reporting from Openreach will present you with that certainty. It will be available soon, delivering total peace of mind in terms of accuracy. It will, for instance, tell you how many orders are being completed to the Required By date, how big the tails are and what the failure rates are.

From topline information like that, you’ll be able to drill down to individual job numbers, or to individual job numbers that fail. You’ll also be able to sort, filter and pivot the data by region and order type. For instance, by looking at provide orders for Scotland, or at provide orders nationwide.

You’ll even be able to use our incredibly powerful management reporting tool to compare the service you’re getting from us against the average being delivered across the entire Openreach customer base, to check that you are being treated fairly.

Safeguarding your assets

With mergers and acquisitions, we can help to ensure that the transition of assets between companies is as seamless as possible. Openreach can work with two Communications Providers to agree to the transfer of a specific product contract from one to the other. This would embrace everything under the contract, including equipment, circuits and lines.

The process we have established to conduct such transfers effectively moves all the newly acquired assets to the company gaining the contract, so it can start placing orders, reporting faults and receiving integrated bills.

Moreover, it’s a process that can be used in a range of business scenarios, including outsourcing contracts between Communications Providers. This service is now available for LLU, WLR2 and most Ethernet products for a fee, under our novations banner.

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Automatic refunds if we don’t live up to our promises

You no longer have to apply for a rebate if Openreach doesn’t live up to its service level agreement commitment to you. Instead, for most of our products, we will calculate exactly how much compensation is due and refund the correct amount automatically, without you having to do anything at all.

Matching responses to business criticality

In a total or partial loss of service situation, all your customers are covered by standard Openreach line maintenance within tariff. And you can report faults to us 24 hours a day, every single day of the year.

Standard response times are based on a five-day working week. Depending upon the criticality of their communications, businesses may require faster than standard response times. These are available for an additional rental that you can of course onward bill. Here’s a top level view of our care levels, as they apply to WLR and LLU:

Conclusion

You know about Openreach’s commitment to equivalence; in not just living up to the letter of the undertakings that we gave to the industry and to Ofcom, but in living up to the spirit of those undertakings as well.

You can be confident that we can help you to differentiate your business in the marketplace.

You can be confident that we can deliver the Service Products that enable you to delight your customers with the quality and completeness of the service you deliver.

And, thanks to our financial stability, geographical reach and strength on the ground, you can be confident that we will be here to deliver those products tomorrow, wherever you need them.

WLR

Care name Response time Service availability

Level 1 Care Basic Lines

96 hours Monday to Friday excluding Public & Bank Holidays

Level 1 Care Premium Lines

48 hours Monday to Friday excluding Public & Bank Holidays

Level 2 Care Basic Lines

72 hours Monday to Saturday, excluding Public & Bank Holidays

Level 2 Care Premium Lines

48 hoursMonday to Saturday, excluding Public & Bank Holidays

Level 3 Care Basic & Premium Lines

24 hours 24x7x365

Expedite Repair*

Under 24 hours

24x7x365

*Temporarily increases the care level on the line.

LLU

Care name Response time

Service availability

Standard Care 40 hours 24x7x365

Enhanced Care 20 hours* 24x7x365

Enhanced Care Plus On Demand* (only available on Enhanced Care Lines)

5 hours* 24x7x365

*Best endeavours basis only. Openreach only charges for successful outcomes within these time limits.

For more information, or to take advantage of any of the Service Products described in this brochure, contact your Openreach Customer Business Manager, or call 0800 917 0371. Alternatively, email service.products@openreach.co.uk

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www.openreach.co.ukThe telecommunications services described in this publication are subject to availability and may be modified from time to time. Services and equipment are provided subject to British Telecommunications plc’s respective standard conditions of contract. Nothing in this publication forms any part of any contract. BT, Openreach, the BT logo and the Openreach identity are trademarks of British Telecommunications plc.

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