We have done this also and now we have a couple of options if the
customer is a big "Gadget fan " which we are finding true in some cases
so we
have a 5 and 10 dollar plan for managed services. The Free one is only
the 951-2n and the others are 2Hn integrated vs connectorized antennas.
Now that cambium will have the c3voip-200 series soon we will only
offer it as a $10 or they can buy outright with no maint.
I believe there are 2 models one with voip and other not.
On 11/21/2014 11:12 AM, Travis Johnson via Af wrote:
Hi,
This is why we just included a "free" WiFi router with all of our
installations. It wasn't a separate item on their bill, it was just
part of our service. Then we had control of the router, and could
actually test clear to the router from our NOC. The customers liked it
because they didn't have to worry about the router, and when it failed
we just replaced it, no charge.
Again... customer service is what wins the day. :)
Travis
On 11/21/2014 9:00 AM, Ken Hohhof via Af wrote:
I really question if customers want a device to help them
troubleshoot. More like if we (a bunch of network admins) were the
customer, that’s what we’d want. It’s like the guys on Big Bang
Theory trying to imagine what a regular person would want.
The hurdle seems to be getting them to pay someone to fix problems in
their internal network. If you can monetize this by selling an
onsite support plan, or by dispatching from a separate side of your
business that charges for service calls, that is good, as long as you
can say this is not an Internet service problem, it is a customer
network problem. Otherwise, refer them to a local computer shop that
does house calls.
What amazes me is the reluctance to pay us $5/mo for a managed
Mikrotik router that comes with free replacement, phone support and
onsite support. All of a sudden it’s not so interesting to have us
solve the problem for them. Yet they will go to Best Buy and let the
kid talk them into a $200 Linksys AC router as the solution to all
their problems. I guess that points back to me being a poor salesman
compared to the kid at Best Buy. Probably because I know the managed
router is a good deal for the customer, so if they don’t want it, I’m
only going to push it so hard. While Best Buy makes tons more money
on a $200 router than they do on a $50 router and doesn’t give a
rat’s ass what’s good for the customer, so they sell the hell out of
the expensive router. And people like going to stores and buying
cool gadgets. Maybe I need to rub some “new car smell” on the
Mikrotik routers or something.
So I guess if your proposed gizmo has a “new car smell” or “latest
iPhone” aura to it, people might buy it. Just make sure that red
light doesn’t have false detects, or it will just make people
complain their Internet is down because the red light is on.
*From:* David via Af <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Friday, November 21, 2014 9:27 AM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's
Yeah we put a little thought into ours on that behalf.
The customer will have to go to the trouble of signing up for these
alerts and it will only show alerts associated with their tower or CPE.
Even any scheduled work being done on that site.
Alerts for outages on their connection only is all that will be
displayed.
We are not doing this for anyone on our FSK network only the 450 net.
We already have the Portal for billing.
On 11/20/2014 11:47 AM, Josh Luthman via Af wrote:
*An app for my phone? Yuck
*Something that pushes to cutomers letting them know we're having
issues? Yuck
*Something that let's the customer verify their particular service
is good/not? That'd be great!
*Web portal for billing, easy peasy
Why a node fails probably won't be detectable by a machine - in some
cases it's difficult for a person to narrow it down (radio,
connectors, cables, ethernet, surge, etc) but I'd like to see ideas
on this of course.
I use/suggest an outgoing message. IF the customer is having issues
and they do call us, they hear we're having issues and hang up.
This means that we're not telling 100 people there are issues when
25 are effecting ending up with 75 calls next month saying we owe
them a credit when they had nothing to do with an outage.
Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 12:43 PM, Sterling Jacobson via Af
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
What I really want is an integrated system that isn't stuck in
the 90's.
I want the customer to have an app on their phone that tells
them when their network is having issues and why.
I want it to also remind them to pay their bill and provide a
lazy/easy way to do that.
I want that same system to have an engineer app that tells us
when nodes fail and why.
So if a node goes down and it's important, it should show up on
my phone and I can take action.
One of those actions would be to message to outage impacted
customers the ETA to fix etc.
Emails from Cacti don't count.
