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Openreach recognises that from time to time, customers experience serious issues which require our urgent assistance to resolve. Accordingly, the Directors Service Office (DSO) will deal with the most critical cases that satisfy the DSO criteria, by providing designated referral officers direct access to a small team that are empowered to step outside of normal processes, when required. The team is closely allied to the office of the Managing Director of Service Delivery and will take ownership for handling these issues within Openreach.

At this time, there is no DSO offering for FOD orders.

If we have failed a previous engineer commitment and your case does not meet the required DSO criteria, it is mandatory that you escalate within CSM or regrettably we cannot help.  In order to accept your case without any delay it is imperative that you highlight why the case is business critical or brand damaging and ensure the supporting evidence is attached, otherwise this will result in the case being rejected and ultimately delay fault/order resolution.

The most common rejection reasons include no Brand Damage (BD) evidence attached such as;

• No evidence of EU contacting the following stakeholders;
•     MP
•     Ofcom
•     Press/Media
•     Legal/Trading standards
•     Company directors

10.1     Key criteria

Your referral to the DSO team must satisfy one of the below criteria.

•          Should the issue not be managed via the DSO, it is likely to result in;
•          (a) Significant damage to CP brand or reputation, examples include;
  •     MP, Ofcom, Press or Media intervention with a customer regarding a delayed provision or repair,
•          (b) And/or pose a public health and safety risk, (This does not include cases that are covered by the Emergency Welfare process).  Examples include;
  •     Blue light cases – which are service issues impacting Police, Fire, Ambulance Station, Hospital or Doctors surgery only
  •     Emergency type telephones such as in a lift or fire alarm
•          (c) Or significant revenue loss, financial liability or litigation, examples are.
  •     Lack of service impacting an end customer’s ability to trade and conduct business, which is severely impacting their revenues
  •     Legal impact to a CP or business end customer due to delayed provision or repair
•          (d) Or the issue is one that would otherwise have been referred to an Openreach Director or senior executive, examples are;
  •     Customer escalating to director and above at CP Level
  •     These are cases that would consequently result in an escalation to OR Director level

How is evidence provided?

Once you’ve completed the online form you’ll be taken to a page to attach evidence. This attachment, along with the information you input on the form will be used to validate that your case meets the DSO Criteria.

Why is evidence needed?

The DSO must serve all CPs in a fair and equal way. To do this our criteria sets out when we can help, your evidence validates that your case meets the criteria.

Types of Evidence

•          Email or letter from an MP/MSP to a CP specifically about the same fault or order on your DSO referral
•          Email chains showing the high-level impact and damage to CP brand
•          Full details of any financial impact to you or a business customer with full figures and justification
•          Copy of a story already featured in the press or email evidence of press contact showing a clear intent to run a story

When shouldn’t you use the DSO?

• When it is an order with an Openreach error or delay (Unless meets above criteria)
  •     The escalation process in the Customer Service Plan should be followed as we do have other escalation points within Openreach that should be utilised before any approach to the DSO
• When it is an order entry issue, or no existing order
  •     The DSO has no capability to raise or amend orders. The team can only assist if there is an open/live committed order or fault
• When it is a premium product/service repair issue
  •     Once reported these faults will automatically be managed with the maximum amount of focus and speed. Intervention from DSO could possibly cause a delay
• When it is a Project or Multiple orders
  •     The DSO do not have the resources to deal with multiple orders/projects. The DSO can only manage up to 4 orders per DSO case for the same customer at the same location. Furthermore, only a single DSO case can be raised per customer, any duplicate requests will be rejected

These changes make it much clearer on what should be addressed to the DSO and will help to ensure that the DSO can apply the necessary focus on the most appropriate cases. CPs should continue to use existing escalation channels in the Customer Service Plan for all other work. Your support on this important change is appreciated.

Referring your issue to the DSO team

We have a dedicated CP Portal located in the ‘My Tools’ section of ‘My Dashboard’ on the Openreach portal:

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/customerzone/loadMyDashboard.do

This is accessible to registered Referral Officers from each CP (see below for details of who can use the DSO Service). The portal allows you to enter a DSO case and then electronically submits this to the DSO team. A unique case reference will be returned to you and shortly after that your case handler will make contact with you. Please note there will be additional validation to ensure the case meets the DSO criteria.

DSO Escalation

If you are unhappy with the way your case is being handled or progressed please use the following escalation path.  Please note these details must not be given to members of the public.

DSO Contingency Process:

In order that business critical issues can still be raised, where there is an Openreach portal system failure, the following contingency process has been arranged.

• Please complete the form below and email to dsovalidation@openreach.co.uk

•          Ensure you include the details on why the request is business critical or band damaging.
•          On receipt the DSO will review your request against the agreed criteria. You will then receive an email from us giving details of your case reference and next steps we will be taking.
•          Once the portal is able to take requests the use of this contingency will cease. 

DSO Out of Hours

To enable rapid pick up of a DSO issue after 19:00 and at weekends we would ask that you call 0800 432 0582 Option 3 in addition to submitting your request on the portal.  This will ensure that our on-call manager is alerted.

Who can use the DSO Service?

Each Communications Provider should agree a list of designated representatives who are authorised to pass issues into the DSO.

To register a DSO referral officer, please contact dso.referral.officer.list@openreach.co.uk

Key Features of the DSO Service

•          It operates 7 days a week 24/7.
•          We are a stand-alone escalation point and are not associated with Openreach CSM who deal with recovery of date commitment failure in Openreach.
•          We may need to raise charges for out of hours work – we will agree these with you in advance.
•          We can only accept cases from agreed CP Referral Officers.
•          To ensure that you’re getting the most effective service, we monitor your usage and share these files with our business integrity team. We expect usage to be proportional to your working system size. If we think that you are sending a disproportional amount of cases we will advise your Customer Experience Manager to address this.

DSO process for placing or removing an emergency call barring or Temporary out of service (TOS) order, in cases of suspected fraud

The process is ONLY to be used when:

• Fraud is suspected and a barring or TOS  order cannot be placed due to an EMP Planned/unplanned outage or an open order prevents an order being placed on EMP

To raise a case please follow the DSO Contingency Process ensuring that your referral includes the following information:

• Request for Emergency Barring or TOS – Fraudulent calls
• Due to the urgent nature, financial implications and time of the day these events tend to occur we will accept cases from your Duty Manager. 
• To enable rapid pick up of a DSO issue after 19:00 and at weekends we would ask that you call 0800 432 0582 Option 3 in addition to submitting your request

For call barring or TOS orders placed in this way, the barring or TOS will remain active until a further request to remove the barring is received by the DSO.

Blue Light (non-emergency welfare)

A task can be passed to the DSO as a blue light case only if the reason for why it is critical is made clear during submission and it relates to a station/base/site for the following:

1.     Police

2.     Fire

3.     Ambulance

4.     Coastguard

5.     Hospital

6.     Medical Doctors surgery

7.     Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)

8.     Mountain Rescue

9.     Lowland Rescue

10.  Cave Rescue

11.  Moorland Search and Rescue Services

12.  Quicksand Search and Rescue Services

13.  Mine Rescue

14.  Bomb Disposal

Blue Light case volumes will be under regular review to ensure the process is being utilized appropriately and fairly. Any misuse of the process may result in CPs access to process being restricted or temporarily removed.

If the DSO is to be contacted please follow the DSO Referral Process, detailed in section 10 of the CSP. 

All updates for the case will only be provided to the referral officer that submits the case.

The escalation contact is the DSO who can be contacted on 0800 432 0582.