Replacement modems for customers with no coverage

I had a call today from a Jump partner who was unsure about whether she could issue a replacement modem for a faulty one, when the coverage checker was indicating no coverage or capacity at her address.

The short answer is ‘Yes, you can’. When it comes to replacing faulty modems, we want to make this as seamless as possible, so there really isn’t any need to do a coverage check at all.

Unless of course if the customer has moved to a new address and not notified Skinny. But if they are at the same address and they already have Jump service, then you should just be as helpful as possible in getting them a replacement modem.

If all Jump customer played by our “rules”, partners should not even be involved in issuing replacement modems – this is for the Skinny Care Team to do when a customer calls them with a suspected faulty modem.

But we know customers don’t always follow the rules, so they turn up on your doorstep and you have to take it from there. C’est la Vie! That’s life!

Briefing for new Ciena Partners to be held on Thursday 15 February

I have had a few inquiries from partners about offering the Skinny Jump Ciena plan to their communities – remember this gives families with school-aged children free access to the internet for the rest of this year. I have scheduled a briefing for these prospective new partners for Thursday 15 February at 11am. You can sign up here.

Existing partners are welcome to join in as well if they would like a refresher on Ciena. 38% of our partners have signed up less than 5 families during the last 12 months, so I can understand if our processes are a bit fuzzy.

The most important thing to remember is that a Skinny Jump Profile Form must be completed for all Ciena sign ups, whether a new modem is being issued or whether a family is transferring from a standard pre-pay Jump connection. The form initiates the modem provisioning process. And of course we do need a scanned or photographed copy of the Ciena Jump for Students Fund referral form.

Existing partners should receive the new pad of referral forms (with 31 December 2024 as the end date) today or tomorrow. We will send a pad of these forms to any new partners after the Thursday briefing.

Updates for Ciena Partners

What a fantastic start to the new year – by 8 February, 139 more families with school-aged children were benefitting from a free internet connection for the 2024 school year. So a few things to note (mainly for Ciena partners) but if you are not already a Ciena Partner and really want to offer this to your community, please send an email to jump@diaa.nz.

  1. We would love to reach our target of 600 new families by the end of March. Families will then get the maximum benefit with at least 9-10 months of free internet. Those who have already signed up will be getting 11 or 12 months.
  2. All families who signed up in 2023 have had their Ciena plans automatically extended until the end of 2024.
  3. We have just received supplies of the 2024 Ciena Referral Forms and will be couriering these out to Ciena partners over the next few days. Please consign any old forms that you are holding to your paper recycling bin.
  4. When scanning the Referral Forms to jump@diaa.nz it would be really helpful to have the parent/caregiver name in the email subject line; we struggle at times to read handwritten names on the referral forms. Some partners already do this – thank you.
  5. There is some confusion about how customer accounts are provisioned for Ciena. This is not an automatic process. First of all we must have a Profile Form completed, whether this is for a new customer or an existing Jump customer customer transferring to the Ciena plan. This then triggers a request to the Skinny support team to provision the customer’s account for Ciena – this can take 1-3 days. We (DIAA) receive a notification when the account is provisioned and send a confirming email to the customer (see text of email below). This can also take a couple of days, depending on our workload. But even though it could take up to a week from the time the customer gets their modem, they do have their start up 35GB to keep them going and when their account is provisioned they immediately get a full month’s data allowance of 210GB.
  6. The text of the email that we send to customers to confirm that their modem has been provisioned is as follows: 
    • I am pleased to confirm that your Skinny Jump modem (Broadband number {{Description}}) has been provisioned for the CIENA plan.  This means that your account has 210GB data that will expire at the end of this calendar month and a new 210GB data added on the first day of next month.  This will now continue until December 2024. Ciena approved this extension for another year on 15 December 2023.
    • Please note that as this is a sponsored plan, it is not possible to top up your account – if you use your whole data allowance in less than a month, the internet will stop working and you will have to wait until the first day of the next month to get another 210GB data, so we do encourage you to keep an eye on your data usage on your Jump Dashboard or App.  If you find that the data allowance really isn’t enough for you and your family, then you might want to check other ‘on account’ plans, but of course you will have to pay for these.   There is no penalty if you do choose to change to another service.
    • If you do wish to cancel your Ciena Jump service for any reason during the year, please return the modem to your nearest Jump delivery partner, so that we can reset it and reissue to another family.
  7. We have had some requests from customers on the Ciena Plan to revert back to standard Skinny Jump. You might think this is rather strange – why would anyone want to give up a free connection for a paid one – well we did get an explanation from one customer. With the Ciena Plan, 210GB of data is loaded onto the customer’s account on the first day of each calendar month. The customer explained that her kids managed to use all this data within the first couple of weeks, and since there is no option to top up sponsored accounts, she didn’t have any internet until the start of the next month. She preferred regular Jump where she could manage her children’s time on the internet and top up as required. If you do find any customers asking to revert to standard Skinny Jump, you should use the Modem Returns process to get the modem reset; your customer will need to set their modem up again and establish a new account, but they will be able to use their same email as the modem reset process delinks their email from the modem.
  8. Another thing to watch out for is when a customer on the Ciena plan returns a faulty modem; make sure you always complete a new Profile Form, clearly stating that the customer is on the Ciena plan and wishes to remain on it. This will then trigger the Ciena provisioning process as for new signups. The only difference in this case is that these customers do not need to complete a new Ciena Referral form.

Could there be some confusion about handling returned modems?

After three partner calls today about modem return processes, I thought it might be helpful to restate current procedures.

A Modem Returns Form must be completed for every returned modem. Any modem that has been issued to a customer and returned, or any partners who experience problems when assisting partners set up a new modem, must be put through our modem returns process. Please do not contact Skinny about these, by email or phone. This just wastes your time and theirs, as queries inevitably come back to us at DIAA.

We do our best to try and stop partners having to deal with returned modems at all. Please stress with your customers that they should always contact the Skinny Care Team on 0800 475 4669 to report any faulty modems; the Care Team then completes the Modem Returns Form, saving partners the time and effort.

We know this doesn’t stop your customers just turning up on your door-step saying their modem is faulty, and thank you to all partners who do their best to help. We also know that some Skinny Care agents incorrectly advise customers to go to their nearest Jump partner – we are trying to fix this with the Skinny Jump team with regular reminders. But there will always be some agents who get it wrong, especially if they are new ones, and we must accept that that is life – none of us are perfect.

Helpful tip: If any customers returning faulty modems claim that Skinny told them to go to a partner, please ask your customer the day and time when they received this advice and if possible the name of the Skinny agent that told them to do this. All calls to the Care Team are recorded for training purposes, so if these details are known the Skinny Jump team can find the recording of the call and find out what is causing the wrong information to be given – it is not always the fault of the Care Team; some customers can be very difficult, as I am sure you well know, even when they are benefitting from such a wonderfully subsidised service like Jump.

So what happens next? Modem Return Forms populate a shared GSheet that is used by the Skinny Support Team to advise the next steps. If the modem is truly faulty, they will ask us (DIAA) to send a replacement and recover the faulty unit for repair. By the time this arrives, normally within 2-3 days, the faulty modem has been delinked from the customer’s account, and the customer can proceed to set up the new modem with their same email. If they have residual funds on their old account they can also call the Skinny Care Team and ask for these funds to be transferred (they can not do this if they use a new email to set up their new modem).

Some partners have reported challenges when completing Modem Returns Forms as they don’t have all the details to hand. Don’t be put off – if there are any data fields you don’t know, then simply enter “not known” and the form will let you proceed to the next field. What is most important is that the Broadband number is entered; if you don’t have this then we you suggest you just contact Shelley (0800 463 422) and ask her to send you a return courier bag, as without a Broadband number, the modem is automatically faulty. The Skinny Care team can not initiate the modem reset and de-linking process if they don’t know the Broadband number, so there is no point in carrying on with our wonderfully thought out processes – just short-circuit straight to Shelley.

I know this seems like a lot of words to explain things – if you prefer a better version please work through Tawera’s fabulous new online Jump training modules. I know many of you are and are enjoying the experience.

Annual modem stock-take: who is Georgia?

Over the last few days many Jump partners have received a polite (I hope) call from Georgia to remind you about completing your modem stocktake before 31 January.

Georgia is a 14-year old secondary student, who has had more impact in getting responses from partners than I ever get from my blog posts! 

So thank you to everyone who responded so positively to her request – to those who did an on-the-spot check and relayed the modem IMEIs to her immediately, to those who promised to follow up with an email to jump@diaa.nz with the IMEI numbers of their stock and have already done this, to those who promised to do this over the next couple of days and to those who have cleared their voicemails and will be responding with the IMEI numbers of their stock by 31 January 2024.

Partners who had stock levels that matched our Google doc records were a very small minority – congratulations to you for an impeccable record in ensuring a Profile Form is completed for every modem issued.

Remember it is the Profile Form that manages stock levels and determines when we send you more modems, so if a profile form is missed, then you are inadvertently delaying your next shipment of modems. As a result of Georgia’s calls we have so far discovered 16 partners with zero or very low stocks – one had been patiently waiting since August 2023; another had zero stock, yet our records indicated 17 modems available for issue. We have immediately lodged re-supply orders for these partners.

The good news is that Spark has totally caught up with the lengthy backlogs in the supply of modems; during January, many of our re-supply orders are being processed the same day and shipped the next. So there is no reason why any partner should run out of modems.

I can understand why partners have learnt to be patient when we were experiencing a 2-month lag in modem supply, but hopefully that is behind us, so if for any reason you run out of modems or you find your stock getting precariously low, check your Google sheet to see if more are on order, in which case you can relax as these modems should arrive within 7 days. 

However if you are out of stock and you discover that no more have been ordered, this will mean that some of your team are issuing modems without completing Profile Forms, so do encourage them to engage with Tawera’s fantastic Partner Pathways online modules and get a refresher on the correct procedures. But you can also let us know by emailing jump@diaa.nz and we’ll take urgent action to get some more on their way.

Our objective is that you should never run out of modems; we would like to abandon our waiting list process – this is still reporting 225 waiters across the country and this is not now because of a modem shortage, we understand it is mainly because of the reluctance of many customers to answer their phones or texts and visit a Jump partner when you notify them. 

Our suggestion is that people who do not respond to your notification that you have stock available are removed from the waiting list after 7 days.

Partner Pathways a hit!

Did you miss Sue Kini’s Jump eNewsletter sent earlier this week? We know that half of all Jump partners have read the exciting news about the Partner Pathways now being live, but maybe the other half are still on holiday and just catching up with their emails?

Anyway, this is absolutely something you don’t want to miss, especially for partners where new team members are helping with Jump sign-ups. 

Just one day after the new online training materials were launched, 83 Jump partners had registered. We want to see all 312 active Jump partners register by 23 February and have a chance to win some treats (check out Sue’s Newsletter to find out more about these treats).

And the feedback coming from partners who have dipped into Partner Pathways is fantastic:

“I think that the information around the 3 C’s was excellent, as it really explains the ethos and how to approach conversations with care, compassion and empathy, while also being firm to ensure that those who need it most are most likely to receive service”

“I absolutely love this new portal, and think that this will be a truly invaluable tool for all jump partner organizations to keep on top of training! I would love to have the opportunity to help if at all possible.”

“I feel completing the course will improve my delivery of Skinny Jump to customers.”

Keep it coming – we love getting your feedback – the good and the bad!

Now to get to the point of my post this morning – next week, starting on Tuesday 30 January, Sue and Tawera are hosting a short webinar every day at 11.00am for any partners who have questions about the new Jump training programme. Sign up here to join one of these sessions and we’ll send you the zoom link.

Urgent update for Jump modem stock take

Congratulations to the 28 Jump partners who have completed their modem stock takes and are now on the Jump ‘nice’ list. I have forwarded your details to the person in the red suit and he has advised that because of global traffic congestion, he is leaving for his Christmas duties at midday tomorrow (Wednesday 20 December). 

So while he has made it clear that he welcomes Jump partners onto the ‘nice’ list at any time during the year, he asked me to send his apologies to anyone who doesn’t make the list by midday tomorrow. He can’t guarantee he’ll meet the Monday deadline, when the world takes a pause.

Jump Modem Summer Stocktake – make sure you are on the Christmas ‘nice’ list!

Once every year, we ask all Jump partners to check that their modem stocks match our GSheet records. A match means that you should never run out of modems. Our modem supply process relies on a customer Profile Form being completed for every modem issued; we then use this information to update your Jump GSheet, which then alerts us when your modem supplies are dropping and we order some more for you.

Easy as! What could possibly go wrong? Many things it seems, but a stocktake can quickly put things right.

We are asking all Jump partners to carry out a simple stocktake over the summer holiday period, so that we start the new year with a clean slate. All you need to do is count the number of modems you have available for issue and check cell W2 (Actual Stock on hand) in your Jump GSheet. If these two numbers are the same – Bingo! You are definitely on Jump’s ‘nice’ Christmas list.

If the numbers differ, just send us an email (jump@diaa.nz) listing the IMEI numbers of the modems you are holding, so that we can mark the others as ‘allocated’ and you are automatically added to the ‘nice’ list.

If you are scratching your head, wondering how to access your Jump Sheet to find cell W2, we have created a mirror copy here that you can check – note columns B, C and D in particular.

We are worried that some partners appear to be still holding the older B315 and B618 modems (columns E and F in the mirror copy) and that might prevent them getting on the ‘nice’ list. Our records indicate there are nearly 200 of these older modems still in partners’ stocks. We know some of these will be reset modems and provided they are suitable for re-issue, that is fine, but we ask you to issue these ahead of any of the newer Smart modems. However, we suspect that in some cases, this could just be a matter of modems being issued without Profile Forms being completed. Your stocktake will solve this problem and you automatically join the ‘nice’ list.

So, just to make sure you make it to the 2023 ‘nice’ list, please send an email to jump@diaa.nz confirming your Jump modem stock matches our records or advising us where there a differences – either way you join the ‘nice’ list for the Jump Summer Stocktake.

And we all know what happens for people on ‘nice’ lists at Christmas!

Skinny Jump stocktake is coming to town

With a little help from ChatGPT!

Ho ho ho! The Jump stocktake’s on its way,
Gathering data to ensure no delay.
For each modem issued, are your forms complete and firm?
Hurry now, the stocktake’s near, it’s time to confirm!

We’re making a list, checking it twice,
Gonna find out who’s been naughty or nice.
So complete your Jump Profile forms right now,
To make the stocktake wow!

So be good for goodness sake,
Don’t delay, there’s a lot at stake.
For every modem that you’ve issued out,
A form’s needed, without a doubt!

You better watch out, stay on your toes,
The Skinny Jump stocktake, everyone knows.
So let’s get those forms filled out right,
Stocktake’s coming, to bring the light!

Shout it from the rooftops – Ciena extended for another year!!

The Skinny Jump team has been negotiating with Ciena, one of Spark’s equipment suppliers, to extend the Ciena programme for another year.

Today, Ciena said yes! Thank you to the partners who provided feedback on how much the programme is appreciated by their communities. This feedback was shared with Ciena and I am sure this helped secure the extension.

All Jump customers with an existing Ciena plan (over 800 families) will automatically have their free internet connection extended for a further 12 months and all new signups will receive a free connection until the end of December 2024. An email was sent today to all existing families advising them of the good news.

While the number of new connections is limited, we are keen to accelerate the signup rate so that as many families as possible get the benefit of a full-year’s sponsorship. We are working on some ideas with the Skinny Jump team, but do let us know if you have any suggestions.