FROM THE INDUSTRY
Stage 2 Fibre installers Sam, Chris, Kim and Wayne arrived promptly at 1pm as arranged, I furnished them with tea and Mr Kipling’s cakes and watched them scurry up telegraph poles and drill into my home, explaining in detail what was happening and why. They took particular care to explain why my landline was no longer needed, what fibre to the home actually meant and we discussed the best place for the box to be placed outside my front door. At this point I came clean and admitted my secondary interest in their work. I wondered if the treatment I’d get would be any different after revealing my mystery shopper identity, but they were as charming and informative as they had been beforehand. And they all took a copy of the magazine home with them. My router was installed, speed check tests were done, and I was left with Sam’s personal email address just in case where were any issues. Sam even gave me advice on how best to recycle my old router, should my previous provider not want it back (there are now sections at household recycling centre dedicated to routers and cables).
Stage 3 We’re good to go. Couple of glitches over the coming days led to another representative from Community Fibre coming to the house again to change the channels the signal was using, which is a change from previous providers who do it all over the phone. I’ve been impressed with the speed and signal ever since. Editor’s note: I’d like to add some dramatic licence to all this in the interests of creating a great story, but the reality is, that was about it. So I talked to Peter Rampling, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Community Fibre, to hear a bit about their journey, and how they have been voted No. 1 for Customer Satisfaction in Which’s survey of Best and Worst Broadband Suppliers in 2024.
When the Community Fibre flyer landed on my doormat it occurred to me the customer journey is a seldom visited area in Broadband Journal, and one we could all potentially learn from. I wasn’t unhappy with my current provider, and I don’t have the time to be shopping around for the best deal, but the pricing caught my attention so I looked into it a little further. Stage 1 The online journey was seamless and quick; the service Community Fibre were offering did apply to my postcode (not always the case, which strikes me as a particularly pointless marketing drive), and I found myself with a booking for a few days’ time. So far so good. £26 a month for 1Gb and it’s fibre to the home you say? What’s the catch? My existing provider promised fibre to the home when I signed up two years ago, but I discovered too late it was only fibre to the cabinet, something that only my day job afforded me the knowledge to know the difference. In fact, I quizzed the installer on his way back from the cabinet about all this and he looked a bit red-faced at the time. Ofcom have since issues guidance ‘to ensure consumers are given clear information about their service when signing up to a new deal’.
What’s the ethos behind Community Fibre?
“Community Fibre was set up by some very smart guys who were also very community-centric, hence the name. They said, ‘We want to take the best internet to the people who need it the most.’ Ten years ago fibre was more focused on the leafy suburbs where the rich people were, whereas the founding fathers wanted to take it into the central London estates, where there were some economic challenges.”
SEPTEMBER 2024 Volume 46 No.3
71
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