Informational Item – Status Report on FPB Website:

The Frankfort Plant Board website (fpb.cc) has proven itself a very effective tool in not only  marketing our products but providing customers with a valuable source of information regarding our services and pricing. Information available on the website has helped make our customers more informed when they call our Customer Service Department. Since we have implemented our various online forms, customers have enjoyed and made use of the interactivity and ease of communicating with us to order services, ask questions or offer comments.

The FPB website currently consists of more than 300 pages of information. In addition to the basic HTML web pages, there are 18 documents in PDF format. The website has more than 380 images, Flash animations and Flash Video to support the written information. Website statistics are monitored to provide Staff with an indication of what pieces of information the customer is most interested in. With these statistics, we are able to track what pages are visited, how long a visitor remains on the site, what key words are being searched for and which pages are drawing the most visitors. These statistics continue to indicate a large number of customers are accessing the site for various pieces of    information, especially the pages offering online ordering.

In 2006, a total of 259,844 pages were accessed by 70,737 visitors. That averages to 21,653 page loads per month by 5,894 visitors. Thus far in 2007, there have been 59,739 page loads by 16,370 visitors. These totals average 29,869 page loads by 8,185 visitors per month. This is an increase of 28% usage in the first two months of 2007. Staff expects these numbers to remain high as more online ordering of services are offered as well as the implementation of online bill payment.

Since November 2006, 708 online forms have been processed and sent to Customer Service Staff and others to assist our customers. Residential Broadband Upgrades have accounted for 360 of this number. Complete Plan orders totaled 72 while Telephone Service Requests equaled 46. There were also 5 Business Broadband Upgrades. Since November, we have also received 225 comments and questions from our customers. These messages range from questions about our services to requests for additional programming options. In addition to these forms, we receive numerous online submissions weekly for Cable 10. These requests range from the posting of meetings and other information on the Cable 10 Bulletin Board to requests for our videographers to cover a particular event for playback on Cable 10.

As our Broadband penetration continues to increase, Staff believes the Internet will continue to be a valuable tool to both market our services and educate our customers. We understand the importance of providing accurate, thorough and up-to-date information to assist our customers. We are constantly evaluating new pieces of information and new ways to assist our customers via online information.