Openreach – Organisation Focus

For an introduction to the Openreach Executive Board, their areas of responsibility and previous experience click here.

This month we talk to Managing Director Service, John Small, who is responsible for the success of the Openreach service programme. His team is focused on delivering a great service experience for Openreach customers and their end-users. We spoke to John about his new role and his goals for the future.

What does your role involve?

My role has been created to provide a focal point for the Openreach service agenda. I’m working closely with John Dunn (Managing Director Operations South) and Andrew Jones (Managing Director Operations North) and our Chief Engineer Bob Cowie to produce the best possible plan that will ensure we deliver a great customer experience for all.

I have three key responsibilities. The first is to help coordinate the delivery of service across the UK and to ensure we consistently deliver to the highest standards. The second element of my role is to manage the service relationship with our customers in support of Anne Heal’s (Managing Director Sales, Products and Marketing) account management team and the third is to work with everyone in Openreach to build our business improvement change agenda so that we can satisfy all our key stakeholders’ needs.

What qualifies you for the job?

I want everyone to experience great service because I believe this is key to realising the benefits of technology – our customers and their end users deserve nothing less. I will work as hard as I can to promote the needs of our customers and their end users. I will listen to anyone and everyone in the quest for solutions that work – I am not going to give up!

Experience wise, I’ve been with BT for 25 years and have been doing operations jobs most of my life, so I know exactly what it’s like to be on the front line.

I also know what it is like from our customers’ perspective – I’ve run my own business in the past, so I know what it’s like to experience poor service, even for a short time, and I can assure you that it is excruciatingly painful.

What attracted you to the role?

I took this job because I really wanted to be part of Openreach and I want everyone to have access to the very best technology and use it to enrich lives.

Not only does the role offer me the chance to work more closely with the service organisation, but it also gives me the opportunity to make a difference.

For the past three years I’ve been in BT Retail reporting on customer satisfaction performance. I was in a great position to see where things were going wrong, but was not always able to do anything about it easily.

Now I can and I’m really excited about that opportunity.

What are your main goals?

I have one goal and it is the goal that everyone in Openreach should be aiming for – to deliver great service at the right cost.

Providing great service means fewer faults, quicker lead times and keeping our promises. It also means that we are more efficient.

What makes great customer service?

One of the most important things we must do is to understand our customers, appreciate what they want and deliver what we say we will. In a word we must be trustworthy – there is no other way of doing it.

When you buy a TV you expect it to work perfectly when you get it home. If it doesn’t, you have every right to feel cheated.

That’s exactly how our customers feel if we don’t keep our promises and don’t provide them with the excellent engineering they expect for their money.

The foundation of the service we provide is excellent engineering. Without excellent engineering, we cannot hope to fix service. Let’s be proud of our technical excellence.

Where does the service programme fit with your goals for Openreach?

The execution of the service programme is absolutely critical. Openreach was created to deliver great service to all our customers.

The Undertakings are the impetus to providing great service. Openreach is our way of fixing service – something that will be great for our customers, their end users and, ultimately, the whole industry.

What makes this programme different to initiatives of the past?

This is fundamentally different to any service plan we’ve had before, because it is focused on improving the health of the network as well as managing provision and repair.

It shows that we really understand the difference between proactive and reactive maintenance and we have introduced a group of measures that look at things from the customer’s point of view.

Also, we’ve never had a two-year plan before and we are truly working together on this – all feedback is being taken into account and, if things in the toolkit do not work then I expect people to tell us about it.

What does the programme involve?

We are taking a two-pronged approach – invest in the network and fix reactive levels of service. We’ve already started to recruit a further 1,300 engineers and 50 extra managers to help us achieve these goals.

However, the key is not only the level of investment, but the quality of our personal workmanship in what ever job we do. How we execute this plan will determine our success.

When will the programme start to make a difference?

I wouldn’t expect our customers to notice a real difference until three or four months’ time.

We can’t expect any credit for what we’re doing until our customers and their end users start to see a recognisable difference in the standard of service we provide, and this will be a gradual process. If they don’t notice then either we have not done the right things or we have done the right things badly.

Let’s make the wish come true – let’s ensure our customers get the service they deserve – this will be something we can all be rightly very proud of.