Modem Deliveries – Page 2 – Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa

Jump training for new staff

I had a call this week from a staff member in one of our Jump partners who had been asked to take over managing the Jump programme because the person who had been managing this had left. Not surprisingly, she had a number of questions about our processes.

Staff changes in our Jump delivery partner network are not unusual. We met with the Skinny Jump team this week and spent some time discussing the on-boarding process for new Jump partners. But what we quickly realised that everything we were discussing applied equally to new people joining the Jump delivery network.

We have some excellent resources for supporting new Jump delivery staff, but the challenge is to work out how to engage with them and let them know what is available. So here are a few questions for you – if you are reading this, then you are probably an experienced Jump delivery partner and can help connect us with Jump newbies.

Do you know that there are three types of Jump delivery partner?
- Jump referral partner, knows about Jump but is not involved in the issuing of modems;
- Jump connector, issues modems and helps customers set up their Skinny Jump accounts and understand the top-up process;
- Jump specialist, understands all the Jump processes, including modem supply and recovery of returned modems.
Have you completed a Jump Partner Pathway online course?
- Course 1 is for everyone involved in the Jump delivery process (referral, connector and specialist);
- Course 2 is for everyone involved with the issue of modems (connectors and specialists);
- Course 3 is for at least one person in each delivery partner organisation (specialists)
Do you know who to contact for support with Jump processes?
- Sue for training and promotion,
- Shelley for day-to-day operations, and
- Laurence for modem supply and recovery
How should you contact the Skinny Jump team?
- As a delivery partner, you shouldn’t contact the Skinny team directly
- Partners should contact the DIAA team for any support required (jump@diaa.nz for modem supply issues; 0800 463 422 for other day-to-day operational issues; sue@diaa.nz for training and promotional resources)
- Customers should be encouraged to contact Skinny directly if they have a problem using their modem, topping up their accounts and for reporting faults
What are the most important tools for Jump partners?
- Jump Partner how-to guide and FAQ, February 2023 edition
- Skinny Jump Partner Resources, incl Partner Pathway training modules
  - Jump Profile Form, to be completed for every modem issued (except replacements for faulty modems)
  - Modem Returns Form, to be completed for every returned modem or when partners encounter a problem during the modem setup process
  - Partner Google Sheets, activity record for each partner (key document for managing supply of modems); contact Laurence or Shelley if you can’t access your GSheet.

And a final word – if you are planning to move to a new role, please let the team at DIAA know (contact Laurence, Shelley or Sue) so that we can update our records and help the team member replacing you get up to speed with Jump.

Concerns about possible ‘scamming’ practices with Jump

From time to time I get approached by a partner who suspects that one of their customers is ‘scamming’ the Jump modem process. When this happens we try and work out a strategy to handle this on a case by case basis, so that partners and their staff are not having to face confrontational situations. Staff safety is paramount and we are happy to provide whatever support we can to ensure that the Jump delivery experience remains a positive one.

I have summarised a few scenarios below, as reported by partners and suggested some possible responses.

More than one modem requested by people living at the same address. There are many situations where this is totally okay. The most common example is social housing units (although these typically have separate apartment numbers), but we also encounter this where people are living in different dwellings at the same physical address (this is quite common in many rural properties for example). But is also occurs when someone is living in a cottage separate to the main dwelling where the distance is too great for the WiFi signal. In some situations, two or more families are living in the same house, and provided they are not part of the same family unit, then they can be supplied with separate modems. Suggestion: For online applications I get an alert whenever a duplicate address shows up; I then check the applicant’s name, phone and email and if necessary view the property on Google Maps street view to determine if it is a single or multiple dwelling site. If I have any concerns I suspend the delivery until Shelley contacts the applicant to find out more. What is interesting is that most people do not respond to Shelley’s text inquiry (which in itself suggests there could be something fishy) and the application expires after 10 days. It is difficult for partners to do this sort of checking, but the principle really is to query anything that looks odd; if you are satisfied with the explanation, then you can proceed to issue a modem. But if you are not, then you have the discretion to decline the application.
Same person requests a second modem within a short time. This definitely needs an explanation before a further modem is issued. If you are not satisfied, then you have the discretion to decline the application. One of our partners discovered repeated applications by the same family and the same address; they were shopping around, getting modems from different libraries in the same city. Staff became aware of this and created an informal ‘black list’ as an alert for any future applications. The exception of course is when the modem is faulty. Suggestion: Before issuing a modem to someone who claims their modem is faulty, make sure they have reported the fault to the Skinny Care Team or they have returned the faulty unit to you. Partners can also check their Jump GSheets to identify repeat applicants. Simple do a search (Ctl F) for the applicant’s name to identify duplicates.
People who miraculously change their address when the address checker indicates ‘no coverage’. This is a bit more challenging. Skinny Jump does operate on a ‘high trust’ basis, but if there is clear evidence that someone is providing a false address, then partners have the discretion to decline the application. For online applications, we frequently get people at addresses that pass the coverage test, but then ask for the modem to be sent to a different address (which 9 times out of 10 fails the coverage check). Suggestion: For online applications we automatically decline any applications where the requested delivery address is not in Jump coverage. We then contact the applicant to find out why they want it sent to an address where the modem cannot be used. In most cases, we never hear back from those who are possibly scamming the system; people who do have a genuine reason always respond.
People who ‘give’ their modems to someone else and then want another one. This is a bit strange and partners who have reported this have advised that they suspect the modems might have been on-sold (as opposed to ‘given’). It is a breach of the Jump conditions of service for anyone to sell or otherwise dispose of a Jump modem. The Terms and Conditions state: “You may not sell, lease, dispose of, lend or otherwise part with possession of, or modify the Modem in any way“. Suggestion: In this situation, we would advise partner to respectively decline to issue another modem, unless there is an incredibly good explanation. An exception we have encountered is where two people living together have split and one person has taken the modem with them, even though it was registered under the other person’s name. In this case, we treated the modem as ‘stolen’ and asked the Skinny team to block it and delink, so the customer could set up with a new modem.
My modem has been stolen or lost. Regrettably, this is a very common issue. Almost every day at least one Jump modem is reported as ‘lost’ or ‘stolen’. Suggestion: Customers must be directed to the Skinny Care team, so that the modem can be identified and blocked before a replacement is issued. Partners should never replace a modem unless the old one has been returned.
Other situations? Do send me an email (jump@diaa.nz) if you are encountering any other ‘suspicious’ behaviour.

More on Jump Waiting Lists

Many partners are now actively using the waiting list process to signal unmet demand for Jump modems, and we are continuously monitoring these lists to adjust delivery quantities for partners as well as priorities. We currently have 102 modem orders for partners in the pipeline, with total requests for over 1200 modems. This might seem like a lot, but the good news is that waiting times are trending down, and with Christmas coming, we expect this trend to continue at least until February. We have adjusted the re-supply trigger quantity down from 8 weeks to 5. This means that whenever you receive a new supply of modems, you should have enough to last 5 weeks (based on the number issued during the previous five weeks). We do factor in customers on waiting lists, so a couple of reminders about this process.

(1) When you add someone to the waitlist towards the bottom of your Jump Register please include their first and last name and the date they have applied for Jump. The most important field is the date – it must be in the following format: “22-Nov-2022”. Other date formats may not be recognised and this directly affects re-supply quantities.

(2) Do not add people living at locations that fail the Jump coverage test to your waitlists. You should complete an online application for them, so that we get ongoing data about demand that can not currently be met. We do double check coverage for every online application and send an email to applicants at locations where there is no Jump service.

(3) We have noticed some situations where applicants get the green light for Jump coverage when they initially apply, but by the time new modem supplies arrive the situation has changed. This is regrettable, but it is not something we can control. In these situations, please transfer the applicant from your waiting list to an online application.

(4) Some partners are confused about the address verification process and have reported that by the time they discover their customer’s address is not in coverage, they have already set up a Skinny account. The address coverage check MUST come first, and certainly before you start to set up a Skinny Jump account.

(5) And before you add anyone to your waitlist, we do strongly encourage you to use the 6 C’s checklist with your customer to make sure Jump is the right product for them. Failing to do this is likely to lead to further frustration when modem supplies become available and the customer only then discovering that the data cap is not going to work for their household, for example.

Jump modem waiting lists

We are hearing that many partners have taken our advice and have implemented a local waiting list for customers wanting a Jump modem. We would like you to share this with us – just a short email to jump@diaa.nz would help but we have an even better idea. Read on!

We have been trying for the last month or so to target shipments to partners with high turnovers by dynamically adjusting the modem re-supply trigger level. Originally this was based on the number of modems issued during the last 3 weeks, but to try and address the waiting list situation, we have progressively extended the trigger period to 6 weeks. The objective is to ensure partners have enough stock to cover the wait time for new stock (which has now escalated to over 6 weeks).

However, this was based on the assumption that there was no waitlist. Clearly, if partners have no modems, they can’t issue them and therefore it does not truly represent actual demand.

So our cunning plan is to now include your actual waitlist in the calculations. What we would like you to do is record the names of people on your waitlist in your GDoc. Enter their first and last names (columns B & C) immediately underneath the lines with IMEI numbers and the date they joined your waiting list (column E). As modems are allocated to them and profile forms completed we will transfer them from the waiting list to the active customer list.

We know this won’t solve the modem supply chain delays – that is way outside our control – but it might help to further reduce buffer stocks and help get modems to the partners that need them the most.

We also appreciated the pro-active offer from one of our partners who were happy to relocate their slow-moving stock to another partner. We immediately sent them a courier sticker to action the offer.

We also know that some partners with multiple libraries are moving stock between their venues to try and address shortages. We totally endorse this approach, with one provisio, that you send us an email (jump@diaa.nz) advising the source and destination locations and the IMEI numbers of the modems being transferred.

“Just wondering why the stock levels don’t update”

A Jump partner recently sent me a note wondering why the stock levels didn’t update in his Jump Register after he had submitted a couple of Profile Forms.

I was pleased to receive this message because it confirmed that this partner was (a) completing profile forms; and (b) monitoring their Jump register to ensure that the GSheet record aligned with the actual number of modems they were holding.

I suspect his question arose from a misunderstanding about our back-end processes, which in all fairness, we have probably never explained. It’s all about timings.

Alistair schedules this activity into his daily calendar, and on most days, completes everything the same day, but he doesn’t work at the speed of light (like a computer does), so this means it could be up to 24 hours before the updates take effect.

The Profile Form is a Google Form that automatically populates a Google Sheet.

Alistair, one of our DIAA team, works diligently every day transferring selected information from the Jump Profile GSheet to individual Partner Jump registers. This then updates partners’ stock counts. If this triggers a re-order alert, Alistair then places an order for the supply of more modems.

Alistair also drives DORA, our mobile learning centre, and on days when he is moving the bus, he might not get to do the updates until the next day. But he never lets us down and in that sense he is undoubtedly more reliable than a computer.

Confusion about when to order Jump modems online

When two or more partners ask the same question, then it is time for me to post to this blog.

The modem shortage is causing some new issues; we currently have over 900 on order, and it will take at least 3-4 weeks to catch up, by which time we expect to have another 900 on order. As a result of this delay, partners have asked if they should use the home delivery process when they run out of modems.

Our short answer is no! We prefer that you create a waiting list – one partner this week advised us that they have a waiting list of 27! The modems we use for home deliveries come from the same supply pool as that used for partners and our priority for the online pool is for customers who cannot get to a local partner to collect a modem and for replacing faulty modems.

Our guideline for home delivery orders is that partners should only use this for customers who for some reason can not go to a local Jump partner. We much prefer that they come to a local delivery partner where you can give them help to set up their accounts and make sure they know about the Jump app.

However, we do encourage you to lodge an online application for people who do not have coverage or are in areas where there is no Jump capacity. We do double-check that there is in fact no service at this address, but mainly we use this to keep Skinny updated on unsatisfied demand.

So when it is just a case of modem shortages, we encourage you to keep a waiting list, and get back in touch with your customers when further stocks of modems arrive.

Date formats matter for Jump modem counts

Everyone has their own way of writing dates, e.g. 5-Jul-2022, 05/07/22 (or if you are of North American heritage 07/05/22), 5 July 2022, 5-7-22, etc.

And for most things to do with Jump, you have been free to choose whatever format you prefer when entering dates in your Google registers.

But our new cunning plan to dynamically adjust your modem re-order triggers to reflect the number of modems you have issued during the last few weeks does care about date formats. We wondered why the trigger formula wasn’t working for some partners, when everyone had identical formulae.

A bit of detective work revealed the date problem – only dates in the 5-Jul-2022 format (our preferred format) were being recognised, so partners using other formats to record dates when modems were issued were being ignored.

Now I would like to say that this is the only reason why 80 partners are waiting for further modem supplies – but that is not the case. We have identified a small number who were using different date formats and have corrected these.

But the main problem continues to be with the supply chain, stretching right back to the manufacturer in China. It is now 3 weeks since the last batch of modems were supplied, which means many of you will have run out. I’m afraid the solution is not just a simple matter of correcting date formats.

Over 1000 modems are being supplied every month, but we know this is currently not enough to keep everyone stocked at an optimum level. We are hoping our new dynamic trigger system will help to direct modems to partners who have the highest turnover, but there are still mitigating circumstances outside our control.

So, please instruct all staff issuing Jump modems to make sure they use the preferred date format (5-Jul-2022) when recording the date of issue in your Jump Google registers.

Towards a better approach for supplying Jump modems

Every day I receive emails from at least one of our 300+ Jump delivery partners saying they have run out of modems. Our goal is for this never to happen and despite the supply chain challenges caused by Covid, we have tried a variety of approaches to smooth the flow.

We appreciated the support of many of our partners in March this year to redistribute modems they were holding to partners who were desperate for further supplies. But after a month of modem shuffles we became reliant again on the supply of new stock from Ingram Micro.

At any point we have up to 2000 modems in the pipeline, between the time of ordering and the time they arrive at a delivery partner. The challenge is to ensure that supplies arrive, where they are needed and when they are needed, without spending too much time sitting on partners’ shelves.

So today, we have implemented a new approach, called dynamic triggering. Historically our approach has been to set fixed re-supply trigger levels – when a partner’s stock dropped to the trigger level, we automatically placed an order for more supplies. This worked reasonable well when re-supply times were measured in terms of days, but now that we face up to 3 weeks (or at times even longer) to replenish stocks, this approach is not working that well.

Our new approach is to continuously adjust the trigger level, based on historical data. The trigger level for each delivery partner is now based on the number of modems they have issued during the last 3 weeks. For example if a partner has issued 10 modems during the last three weeks, their trigger level becomes 10. Assuming a relatively smooth distribution of modems, the partner should have adequate supplies to last for a further 3 weeks. If delivery times reduce, we can adjust the trigger level to a shorter period, say 2 weeks.

Partners can monitor this themselves in their Jump registers by viewing cell G2 (the dynamic trigger point) compared to their current stock levels (cell H2). When the stock level equals the trigger point, a new order is generated.

We recognise that customer demand will not always be as smooth as the above algorithm requires, but we think this is worth a shot. In particular we expect this will drive supplies to the partners with high turnovers, while minimising the amount of stock held by partners with low turnovers.

BUT, and there is one very big BUT, this does depend on partners ensuring that Profile Forms are completed for every modem issued. We need these to record the number of modems issued, which directly impacts when new orders are placed.

My measure of success will be the drop in emails to jump@diaa.nz requesting further supplies.

Please do not send Jump modem inquiries to Skinny

Some partners are continuing to contact Skinny when they have a question about the supply of modems, and as we are currently experiencing 2-3 week delays in the shipment of modems, these inquiries seem to be on the rise.

Please do not contact Skinny or the Spark Foundation (or Sue Kini for that matter) if you have a question about modem supplies. All these inquiries must go to jump@diaa.nz

Most of these inquiries relate to partners running out of modems. We clearly want to avoid this situation if at all possible. Part of the problem seems to be caused if modems are issued without Profile Forms being completed. Almost invariably, we find that when a partner reports ‘no stock’, their Google register indicates a number supposedly being available. We rely totally on the Profile Forms to update your Jump registers – when your stock drops to the pre-set trigger level (cell G2), we automatically generate a new order for you.

We aim to set the trigger level equivalent to 2-3 weeks of your turnover; if we get this right and you always complete the Profile Forms, you should never run out of modems.

This is not an exact science of course, but we do our best to smooth things out. At any point in time we have up to 2000 modems in what we call the pipeline – between the supplier and the end customer through a local delivery partner. This only represents an average of around 6 modems per partner. The combined value of this stock is around $500,000, so we try and keep the pipeline as trim as possible.

We are happy to adjust your trigger levels if you are consistently running out of modems, so please do get in touch (jump@diaa.nz) and we’ll see if we can improve things for you.

Need some more Jump modems – who are you going to call?

Well not Ghostbusters, that’s for sure. Not Skinny (refer to my earlier blog post). Not the Spark Foundation. Not a Spark retail store. Not Father Christmas.

Well then, who you might ask. Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa (DIAA)- now you are getting warm. But not Eleanor. Not Leilani. Not Sue (although she seems to be the hot favourite!). Who else is there?

Laurence, Alistair and Shelley of course! Laurence handles modem inquiries through DIAA’s Jump email hotline (jump@diaa.nz) and Shelley handles modem inquiries through DIAA’s phone hotline (0800 463 422). And
Alistair handles our back office systems that keep the supply of modems flowing to you.

So please DO NOT CALL OR EMAIL anyone else on the DIAA team if your inquiry has anything to do with modem supply or distribution. This just creates an unnecessary clutter in voicemail and email in-boxes.

We have weathered the Covid storm by putting our shoulder to the wheel and creating new delivery options to ensure the modems keep flowing, so even when partners have had to shut up shop, we have simply expanded our home delivery option. But we don’t have super powers and have no control over issues in the global market such as microchip or neon shortages, resulting from Covid lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine, respectively. Neon gas is a vital component in the laser lithography of silicon chips, and around 50% of the global supply comes out of Ukraine.

Nor can we solve New Zealand modem suppliers problems caused by large numbers of their staff having to self-isolate. Unlike many of us who can continue to work from home, these staff are hands-on, provisioning and packaging Jump modems.

What all this means is that we are all going to have to be patient. You will run out of modems. Customers waiting for home deliveries will call you to find out when their modem is going to arrive.

Please use the systems we have put in place to keep you and your customers informed:

(1) Make sure you are completing a Jump Profile form for every modem issued – this controls the re-stocking process.

(2) Check your Jump GDoc to find out when further supplies have been ordered, either from Ingram or transferred from another Jump delivery partner.

(3) Use the NZ CourierPost tracking number associated with each modem shipment to monitor progress with the delivery of modem supplies.

(4) For individual home delivery inquiries, please email jump@diaa.nz and we can give you a status report. But please note that we currently have a 7-10 day backlog with over 150 households waiting for a modem. By the time we get further supplies this backlog will have increased to over 200. We expect to make these deliveries next week.

(5) Any partner with surplus modem stock, please contact Shelley. During the last week, she has arranged the transfer of nearly 100 modems between delivery partners. Thank you to those partners who have assisted with this. She is still looking for another 200 modems to transfer.