Well it was 10 degrees above zero this afternoon here in northern Indiana. We have been having an issue on one particular tower and after changing the base station equipment a couple times in the last few days, I decided to get out from behind a desk and go out to some customer locations that were still having issues. Turned out to be some minor tweaking of settings but it gave me a chance to interface with some customers face to face.
It was very refreshing to hear compliments about our service and many thanks for bringing broadband out into the rural areas. These were a few customers that had very little service in the last few days. I almost feel like I should make each member of my staff go do this at least once a month. It really gives a guy a renewed appreciation of why we do what we do. Eight years ago when we started this, it was very apparent. Lately it seems like most people expect service anywhere they are and at a very cheap price. Normal phone conversations seem to leave me with a "bad guy" impression. "Too Much", "not fast enough", "whaddya mean, I can't get service", "TWO YEAR CONTRACT, no way!". Well today, shaking people's hands and seeing the smile on their face when everything was fixed and back to normal, takes all that away. Heck, I think I was happier than they were. My last service call was to a gentleman I have known for 20 years from a distance. He called late in the afternoon and said he couldn't get logged on and that our installer had been there today to replace a radio. He was so complimentary on the phone about the quality work and attitude of the installer and the rest of my staff, so I called my wife and told her I would be home in about an hour. I drove 15 miles out of town and fixed the issue rather quickly. Same IP address, different radio MAC address........tower needed a reboot to get rid of the arp issue. I guess I could have done that from the office but this one seemed like it was better handled face to face. The customer was off to church as soon as I left his house and I'm sure that he probably told all his friends about our service and my fine staff. Some people just value the local support a WISP is willing to give to its customers. It's not all about price, service like this makes customers for life, no matter how cheap they can buy it from somewhere else. Oh yeah, I also backed into his mailbox on the way out the driveway. You know, it didn't even bother him....."I'll fix that right up tomorrow, you go on home now" :-) Respectfully, Rick Harnish President OnlyInternet Broadband & Wireless, Inc. 260-827-2482 Founding Member of WISPA -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
