We do pretty much the same thing. If you have a good voip solution you don't get very many calls. We have right at 300 lines and it is not uncommon to go a week or more with no support calls. As a matter of fact with our initial voip provider we had a person on staff just to deal with voip problems. Now we ultimately had to let him go because there was no work for him (it reminded me of the old maytag commercials).
We have learned several things about modems, faxes, and credit card machines. We used to try to get all the lines and try to make it work and keep the customer happy. Somewhere in the process I decided that wasn't working and that we were fighting the same problems over and over. I made a new rule for new customers. We do not support analog credit card machines or modems. The customer could keep an analog line for those or switch the credit card machine to an Internet based terminal. 2. On the faxes, if they are a medium to low fax usage customer, our t.38 fax would be ok. If they are a heavy user we charged a little more per month and used faxxbochs. Once we started using this approach we quit having problems and our customers were happier. As far as installs go we install our ata at the customer demarc so to the customer it is no different that Att. Sometimes they don't know we have even switched them over until the tech let's them know. Anything 4 lines or more we use the spa8000's. They are rock solid. I hve several units that have been in service for over two years without a reset. I don't even get calls from those customers. Just a check. Sent from my iPhone4 On Nov 12, 2010, at 5:45 AM, Bret Clark <bcl...@spectraaccess.com> wrote: > On 11/11/2010 08:18 PM, Ryan Goldberg wrote: >> >> How do you handle support? Custom acd, dial plans, etc. I assume your voip >> partner implements, but what support is yours to deal with, and where do you >> hand off at? >> >> Ryan >> >> >> > We integrated our VoIP partner with our support ticketing system and > support call center (gave them VoIP phones and tied them into our > Trixbox) so it looks like to the customer that they are just > calling/contacting our support team. VoIP hasn't been a problem, but the > biggest PIA we see is faxes and credit card machines...modem and VoIP > are not great combinations...it works but sometimes can be a pain. > > Basically we just run VoIP to an ATA at the customer location and then > just hand off either an analog or digital line that ties into their > existing Key/PBX, so for the customer they really don't see any change > except a lower monthly bill. > > One thing you do need to do is tell the analog customers that they will > lose phone if there is no power...amazing how many customers just don't > understand that concept; guess a 100 years of running on copper have set > thier ways. I won't deny that we sometimes recommend the customer keep > one copper line as an emergency if they are concern with loss of phone > during power outages. > > Bret > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
