When British Telecom needed more bandwidth to support the data demands of the 2012 Summer Olympics, the company turned to its customers. Using software developed by Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive unit, BT was able to split customers’ Wi-Fi routers. “Part of that router actually becomes a public Wi-Fi hotspot,” said Greg Owens, marketing director for Alcatel-Lucent’s customer experience solutions group, which includes Motive.
While BT does not advertise its router splitting, it does disclose the arrangement to new customers in welcome e-mails. “You have two profiles on the router,” said Owens. “You want to make sure they’re completely separate. You want to make sure there’s a firewall, so to speak, between the two connections, especially in situations where you have a usage cap.” Owens said customers want assurance that public users cannot use their bandwidth, and that of course they are also concerned about security.
“For all intents and purposes, the router is divided into two parts,” he said. “It has two completely separate profiles, two completely separate SSIDs and you’d never be able to get from one into the other. So it’s software we install on the router that allows them to be managed as two separate devices.”
The Olympics are of course over, but the router-splitting in urban neighborhoods will continue. In buildings that are occupied by a business on the first floor and by residents on higher floors, the businesses often use their portion of Wi-Fi routers during the day, while many of the apartment residents are away from home.
This fall, British Telecom increased its commitment to Alcatel-Lucent’s customer experience solutions group, signing a four-year contract to upgrade to new tools that will enable data collection and analytics. Much of the data collected is parsed and made available to BT’s customer service reps. When a customer calls the help desk, the support person can “see” their device and often troubleshoot remotely.
“Our retail division in the [United Kingdom operates in a very competitive market and the quality of the customer experience is of paramount importance to us to avoid churn within our customer base,” said BT’s managing director of customer service, Warren Buckley. “The additional benefits of the data collection manager align completely with our drive for continuous improvement in customer support along with the added benefit of providing new features.”
Watch RCR’s interview with Alcatel-Lucent’s Greg Owens.
