With the recent service outage at Broadvoice, there has been a lot of
discussion here, on broadband reports, Voxilla, etc., regarding whether
VOIP is mature, or "ready for the masses", etc.
One particular point I've seen repeated, and with which I agree:
"we're willing to deal with less than five 9s, even one or 2 9s, as
long
as we have good communication regarding the issue and its resolution."
In other words, good customer relations are as important or even more
important than the highest quality of service.
This is no great revelation, but I don't see it practiced very much in
this industry. We read many comments about long hold times, dropped
calls after waiting in the queue, tech support agents who misdirect or
hide internal issues, etc.
Personally, I could almost live with the bizarre happenings at
Broadvoice if there was an official channel of communication outlining
what was happening and estimates on return to service. While I recently
on this list have been a supporter of them ("growing pains, not
incompetency"), recent events, with zero communication, have worn me
down. My money is going elsewhere.
As a counter example, I recently switched to Sonic.net DSL service.
They turned the service on almost a week before they said they would,
and I called the support line to get some information that would
normally arrive by mail but hadn't yet. There was no queue! After
three rings, it answered, and the person who picked up was able to
answer all my questions, was not hurried, and could even answer my Linux
and Linksys questions, even though this wasn't "supported." I
think
they must pay these people a lot more money than industry standard, as
their "customer skills" were outstanding. On a $45/mo. service, no
less. I called back when something wasn't working right, and got the
same experience, with the problem fixed while I waited on the phone.
This has nothing to do with the maturity of the technology or newness of
the industry, this was just a good investment in a customer service
department of the business.
Where do the rest of you weigh in on this?
Are there any VOIP to PSTN gateway companies with this same sense of
focus? VOIP *isn't* mature and probably *isn't* ready for the masses,
but we early adopters seem to be able to live with these things if there
is appropriate communication going on.
Who's the leading contender for "customer service of the year"
award
among the dozens of providers that show up on the Wiki?
-Johnathan
> With the recent service outage at Broadvoice, there has been a lot of > discussion here, on broadband reports, Voxilla, etc., regarding whether > VOIP is mature, or "ready for the masses", etc. > > One particular point I've seen repeated, and with which I agree: > > "we're willing to deal with less than five 9s, even one or 2 9s, as long > as we have good communication regarding the issue and its resolution." > > In other words, good customer relations are as important or even more > important than the highest quality of service.<snip>> Who's the leading contender for "customer service of the year" award > among the dozens of providers that show up on the Wiki?Seems the majority have been or were an isp at one time, and have implemented a defacto isp model for customer service. I'd have to guess that a fair number really don't have a clue what a good/reasonable target happens to be. The flip side of that is that good customer service staffing is expensive and is often times treated as an unwanted / under-planned / under-budgeted operating overhead that is viewed by many as the target for cost control, etc. For the few times that I've had to interact with livevoip.com and teliax.com support, both have been very responsive. Both still seem to emphasize the use of email for interaction, but at least my issues were resolved very quickly with that approach. (For both companies, as soon as they realized that I knew what the hell I was talking about, diagnosing the issue and resolving the problem occurred very quickly. I can just imagine how many calls/emails they get where their customer is reporting a problem that involves a total lack of skills, understanding, mis- configured BOYD equipment, etc. We certainly see it on this list!) If you read between the lines, its not difficult to see that many of the itsp's were started with a primary objective of being purchased by some other larger company. We've already seen some results of that in several recent forms. Those companies only do whatever they think is necessary to 'appear' solid, which also includes managing their customer service overhead to some reasonable level (defined in their minds, not ours). As the itsp space shakes out over time, the winners are likely to be those that do offer some reasonable customer service in combination with acceptable marketing plans, etc. Until that happens, customer service is likely to vary rather dramatically even within the same itsp. So, what you see for custoemr service today from an itsp may be rather different from what you see tomorrow or next week, and those changes can certainly be positive or negative.