Service Hours

[VOIPOinTN]

I've just been on hold for 25 minutes for support. The music changed at 7pm CT when support is supposed to end. Chat did not work before 7pm.
This is not what I call support.

[VOIPoTim]

We do have phone and chat assistance for basic issues, but those mediums will often involve a much longer wait time than just e-mailing or opening a ticket especially around the end of the day when call volumes are high with everyone rushing to call before closing.

Our average hold time today is just over 4 minutes.

Today's Stats:

Average Hold: 4 Minutes
Shortest Hold: 32% Of Calls Answered Within 30 Seconds
Longest Hold: 3.7% Of Calls Answered Between 30-60 Minutes

If you have issues getting through via phone or chat would prefer not to wait on hold, I'd recommending trying a ticket.

Ticket responses are generally fast (right now there are only 3 tickets open and several times today it's been 0).

[stevech]

so 64% of wait times were 1/2-30 minutes?
would be interesting to see percent longer than 10 minutes

Long wait times, no evening/weekend support will limit growth.

[rainsux]

> Long wait times, no evening/weekend support will limit growth.

Bingeaux.

I send a daily newsletter to ~4,000 techies/subscribers ... and will occasionally include
a productivity tip. I have not mentioned VOIPo because of the "support" matter(s).

[GeekJedi]

Then you're doing your readers a disservice. I've had VOIPo for two years now, and have never needed to call support. The two times I've needed help I've submitted a ticket and got an almost immediate reply.

[stevech]

Then you're doing your readers a disservice. I've had VOIPo for two years now, and have never needed to call support. The two times I've needed help I've submitted a ticket and got an almost immediate reply.

You're good fortune. Others, not so much, and the issue is when does VoIPo grow to the point where they can staff weekends and perhaps, longer daily shifts.

[VOIPoTim]

You're good fortune. Others, not so much, and the issue is when does VoIPo grow to the point where they can staff weekends and perhaps, longer daily shifts.

It's not really a matter of growth. We'd love to offer phone support 24/7, but it's a matter of incompatible business models.

We're offering service for as low as $6.21 per month on some terms. We target the budget market and our goal is to provide the lowest cost service possible.

In doing that, our goal is also to provide great support, but we have to provide that within a framework that is compatible with being a budget provider with such low prices.

Customers want service for the lowest possible cost. Customers also want 24 hour support and non-outsourced support, but typically aren't willing to pay more for it. In order to offer those, you must charge a premium price and can't offer service at the lowest possible cost.

Businesses fail when they try to mix incompatible targets. Offering 24 hour support and offering the lowest cost service in the industry are not things you can mix.

Even most wireless and landline companies are now offering support during business hours only. Most only offer an emergency repair line which is simply an answering service type system where they will open a helpdesk ticket for you. You typically won't be able to actually talk to someone with access to an account outside of business hours.

The only mainstream VoIP provider offering 24 hour live support (using overseas call centers) is charging $26 per month and they've lost hundreds of millions in the process...only recently reaching profitability.

With our pricing, if we talk to a customer on the phone once, we may not have any profit on that customer for a year. With e-mails an tickets, it's much more efficient and cost effective so we try to direct the bulk of inquiries there while still giving customers that want to talk to someone options as well.

E-mail and ticket responses are fast and efficient. Phone and chat typically involves a wait, but you'll get a US-based technician that can help you instead of someone in a foreign call center that can't.

We proactively monitor our entire network and have very sophisticated monitoring and alerting so that we can resolve system-wide issues and outages 24/7/365.

I think we offer great service and save people massive amounts of money. Some people may prefer a service with longer support hours and while they may find a provider that providers it, it won't be at our pricepoint.

Some people may prefer a provider with a different model, but we've at least doubled in size every year the last few years so I think our model is pretty popular.

While it's hard to see since you don't see anything behind the scenes, we're very careful and methodical in how we run things. We're profitable in an extremely low margin business and very careful to be sure that we have a sound, long-term business. I'm sure everyone remembers SunRocket.

Bottom line...it's all about different business models. We can't offer 24 hour support or extended support and offer service for as low as $6.21 per month. We can offer one or the other and be successful, but not both.

[stevech]

Re We proactively monitor our entire network and have very sophisticated monitoring and alerting so that we can resolve system-wide issues and outages 24/7/365.

I wish this monitoring included customers' ATAs that fail to register, then VoIPo elects to move incoming calls to the fail-over number. But outgoing calls still work. So customer doesn't know there's a problem.

Also monitor ATAs that don't register and email/text/VM the customer via automation to say there's a problem.

That would be proactive monitoring for customers' benefit, and not add labor cost to the business model.

It just seems that M-F days only is too little, all reliability things considered. And offer such to those wanting to pay a bit more for it.

[VOIPoTim]

Re We proactively monitor our entire network and have very sophisticated monitoring and alerting so that we can resolve system-wide issues and outages 24/7/365.

I wish this monitoring included customers' ATAs that fail to register, then VoIPo elects to move incoming calls to the fail-over number. But outgoing calls still work. So customer doesn't know there's a problem.

This has been debated to death in multiple threads. We only monitor system-wide issues on our network and systems.

We do not offer monitoring of individual customer devices or customer networks.

[kd4das]

Your response makes perfect sense, Tim. Keep doing what you're doing. I'm very pleased with the service for the price.