Wrong on both counts. I used to be in software development, so like anything else, it's who you know. I can get this done for a lot less.
And having an app for the customer to view and fix or find problems on their own is a differentiator itself. Every one of my customers I've talked to about this has expressed great interest in not having to call in if they can help it. I'm guessing a few of the older generation won't have a phone or care to use an app, they can always call in. But in general it looks like it will greatly reduce support overhead for the ISP and increase customer satisfaction at the same time. I guess time will tell. I already have this underway, parts are developed already, but if someone wants to help out, let me know! -----Original Message----- From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Travis Johnson via Af Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 2:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's Sterling, This sounds like an easy task, but I can tell you as someone that is currently developing software, and is starting December 1 to build a simple iPhone app, software development is very expensive. My app is a pretty simple... easy to use front-end with a cloud based database back-end... yet the quotes I have gotten are $50,000 - $75,000. This is from 3 different development companies all based in Utah. All of them are busy and each has 20+ full-time developers working for them, so they have enough business and must not be totally out of line on their quotes. I said this 10+ years ago, and I'll say it again... customer service is the only thing that makes you different than the big cable and telco companies. Having a live person that can help people troubleshoot and fix issues is the key to keeping people with your service. If you are just going to send them to an app on their phones, you become the same as every other provider... and your service becomes a commodity just like everyone else. Travis On 11/20/2014 1:49 PM, Sterling Jacobson via Af wrote: > BUT, the phones now days are smart enough to know when wifi sucks or goes out > completely. > > They fall back to 3/4G. > > Which is awesome, because it could still talk to the service provider end and > tell the customer the status. > > I think this would work better than a green/red light. > > The phone App would tell you that your service is correct to the house, but > that inside it's not talking. > Then walk the customer through a set of standard fix it routines. > > That would solve most of our calls right there. > > On the back end it just needs to talk to a server process that can get access > to the device on the side of the house. > > The best would be an embedded speed test in the ONT/CPE that could report > back to the App and say they are getting what they are paying for to the side > of their house. And then give them suggestions for fixing their crappy wifi. > > I bet it wouldn't take much to get this done and working with a few larger > billing systems and equipment platforms, who's with me?? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof via Af > Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 12:35 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's > > Part of the problem is so many customers are 100% WiFi now, so unless you > have a managed router there, you have 2 big problem areas beyond the demarc - > the customer's router and the customer's WiFi. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Bill Prince via Af > Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 1:04 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's > > Linktechs built a tool a couple years ago that ran on the customer's PC > (WIndows only) that would give the customer a "connection health" > indication. It would monitor the local gateway, and give both a green light > for connected, plus a reading on the latency. You go too much beyond that, > and you will get a bunch of false positives when something beyond your local > network is having some kind of issue (we get our share of these). > > I don't think they got much response from it, and I don't think they offer it > any longer. > > bp > <part-15@SkylineBroadbandService> > > On 11/20/2014 9:43 AM, Sterling Jacobson via Af 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. >> > >
