John Linton
I guess I can't get the reported Westnet personnel figures out of my head. I keep doing the arithmetic while I'm driving or even when I'm reading.
I compare the personnel/calls per hour per person with the figures I see daily on calls to Exetel which for April were:
Date /Average waiting time/ Handled calls /ABN calls /Average ABN time /Talk Time
1/04/2008 2:40 146 17 1:38 5:36
2/04/2008 2:44 144 26 1:47 5:35
3/04/2008 2:27 146 10 2:56 5:55
4/04/2008 2:25 148 12 1:01 5:06
8/04/2008 1:64 153 13 1:22 5:18
9/04/2008 1:23 128 14 0:26 4:51
10/04/2008 1:43 124 9 0:37 4:58
11/04/2008 4:04 99 16 1:42 5:11
14/04/2008 2:30 158 16 3:12 5:21
15/04/2008 2:13 132 8 2:13 5:34
16/04/2008 1:01 104 6 1:16 5:28
17/04/2008 1:02 135 8 0:44 5:20
18/04/2008 1:25 123 1 0:56 4:48
21/04/2008 1:52 152 16 2:10 6:26
22/04/2008 1:06 192 9 0:35 4:40
23/04/2008 0:56 161 6 0:29 5:45
24/04/2008 0:27 129 16 0:37 4:56
25/04/2008 0:25 11 2 0:42 4:17
28/04/2008 0:46 191 2 2:39 5:13
29/04/2008 0:58 176 3 1:58 5:29
30/04/2008 0:18 154 5 1:39 5:39
AVG 1:37 138.38 11 1:27 5:18
April was an 'average' month in terms of support calls received and The average wait time was slightly better than in March and the average number of inbound telephone calls taken for combined support and provisioning issues was a little higher.
These statistics don't include customers who used the telephone to automatically log a 'service down' situation which would increase the total by approximately 50% on weekdays and by 150% on weekends/public holidays when Exetel offers limited telephone support.
Exetel has 12 customer support engineers (4 in Sri Lanka, 6 in the North Sydney office and one each working from their homes in the ACT and the NSW Central Coast respectively) and two managers/supervisors. These personnel deal with approximately 6,000 support calls each month (including those logged automatically) which equates to approximately 30 support calls per person per hour day. These same people also deal with approximately the same number of sales calls each working day.
Given an average of 5 minutes of initial talk time per 'live' call and the requirement to spend a further 7 - 8 minutes for each call in either call back or other actions this is a fairly reasonable work load per person that allows enough time to respond to emails and forum posts without anyone being 'over worked'.
Basically this means that an Exetel service customer will, on average, call or automatically seek assistance less than once each year. I doubt that Exetel offers any more reliable services than any other supplier so I think that in terms of true customer need for support every other provider of similar services to Exetel would have similar figures.
So allowing for Westnet having three times the number of services than what accounts for the 8 times more personnel per service difference?
Surely there's only so many times a customer forgets their password or needs help to set up an email account or whatever else Westnet has decided is their problem to fix?
Exetel's 1:6,000 customer support ratio (which allows telephone support calls to be answered in less than an average of 2 minutes and email support to be answered within less than an average of one working hour) is, by any standards, very efficient. But, for the life of me, I can't understand why Westnet apparently needs a support staff ratio of 1:700.
Hopefully a family Mother's Day lunch at Eleanora will drive these whirling figures out of my mind (it must be the very best smorgasbord lunch in Australia).