yeah baby
From: George Skorup
Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2016 1:01 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Customers texting cell phones "hey my internet isn; t
working"
Troubleshooting tits, count me in!
On 12/4/2016 1:57 PM, Lewis Bergman wrote:
Forget canned trouble shooting tits. have one of these genius app developers
to create a robot that interprets questions and gives your canned steps.
Oh...I am sorry your Internet isn't working. let's reboot your router and
tell me when it lights up again please.
Try the internet please.
Still not working...please unplug the ____ colored cable that leads to the
rectangular black power block labeled "CPE POWER BLOCK".
Still not working? I'm afraid I need to get tier 2 tech support on the line.
please wait.
Then send the ticket to a real person.
On Sun, Dec 4, 2016, 1:30 PM Brian Webster <i...@wirelessmapping.com> wrote:
You know all annoyances aside; there is an opportunity for a product to be
developed. Think about it:
Your customer is off line, they likely have a cell phone that they can use
a
to get in touch with you.
They call your tech support line, this requires you to either call them
back and devote 100% of your time at the moment to talk to them one on one, or
you answer the call directly immediately, no matter what else you might have to
do and you can’t do much of anything else.
If you can text back and forth you would not have to sit there on the phone
and wait while they do things like reboot and such.
On a dedicated phone call this only lets you service one customer at a time.
If you had the equivalent of the on line chat support many companies have,
it could also function through the SMS system, it’s one way the newer tech
savvy customer can interact with you and they can also do something else at the
same time in between steps.
If you had a good SMS system it would start a ticket just like an on line
ticketing system would. Texting prompts back and forth for customer name and
account information if necessary. This part would be automated and all keyed up
to you prior to you getting the first live text/email/ticket notification or on
screen system messages.
This would not have to go to YOUR cell phone but rather it would go to your
ticketing system and get handled just like any other ticket and tech support
network.
It gives the client the convenience of getting support via SMS should they
chose.
You could easily have pre-canned help files sent as basic troubleshooting
steps they can perform first without needing direct interaction. Reboot
sequence or how to request their Wi-Fi password information come to mind here.
If done right it could prompt them to text back a response at each step, much
like a troubleshooting decision tree diagram works. Once it’s gets beyond basic
decision tree stuff it could be transferred to the live tech. This transfer
should also be smart enough to show the tech on screen how far the automated
process went and what steps are already completed so they don’t have to re-ask
all those questions that annoy each of us when we call tech support.
With Google Voice being a free way to do web to SMS interaction, it seems
like some good programmer could build inter some middleware to do this or a
standalone system. Cost for the SMS interface/gateway can then be free. I am
sure there are other methods to also keep the cost free as well.
This clearly would not work for most customers but I can see it becoming
popular over time, getting in front of the idea now and working out best
practices would be good before the consumer demand for it is real high.
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com
www.Broadband-Mapping.com
From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2016 7:35 AM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Customers texting cell phones "hey my internet isn; t
working"
Some carriers support mobile CNAM, some don't. Mine's in there, though.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
Midwest Internet Exchange
The Brothers WISP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Ken Hohhof" <af...@kwisp.com>
To: af@afmug.com
Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2016 9:25:40 PM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Customers texting cell phones "hey my internet isn;
t working"
Awhile back I added SMS-to-email capability to our main number and
discovered people have probably been texting it forever. You don’t need a
cellphone to receive texts. The nice thing is the service we use has the
reply-to address on the email set to properly to text the person back.
What I find annoying is they never include their name, somehow they think
their cellphone number is all we need. So 123-456-7890 wants to know “Is the
tower down?”
I’d rather they use the contact form on our mobile website. It’s not a
“responsive” site, it’s a separate mdot site so the contact form is easy to use
on a phone.
One of the other great mysteries of life is why calls from cellphones don’t
have CNAM. 95% of the calls we get are from “Wireless Caller”. There are apps
for everything, but they can’t do this one simple thing, show me the name of
the mobile caller, without having them in my address book.
From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Brandon Yuchasz
Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2016 8:40 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Customers texting cell phones "hey my internet isn; t
working"
I expected more Sarcasm. But thanks for the reply anyway. We are small
still by most standards and I still go on every install so generally customers
feel they know me a little. That relationship is of course a good thing. Some
texts of course I don’t mind like “ hey the internet has been dropping off
today but comes back” it’s the shitty attitudes that they would never give me
in a phone call that generally piss me off..
From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of That One Guy /sarcasm
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2016 8:31 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Customers texting cell phones "hey my internet isn; t
working"
We call into the office and call the customers from there DID or something
to avoid it. But it happens.
When a customer has my cell, ive given it to them on occasion for
troubleshooting and most of my contract service have my work and personal.
As long as they dont abuse it, I handle their business (facebook is
becoming popular for customers to contact me, which is odd because my face book
is private and highly offensive)
Once they abuse it, they get a couple "call the office"s then they get
ignored.
Like right now there is a voicemail from a contract services customer i
haven't even listened to from two days ago.
I do prefer all communications voice or digital go through work channels,
or phones are recorded and all the digital stuff is logged on company owned
assets. Better in the long term for liability.
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 8:25 PM, Jim Bouse [Brazos WiFi]
<j...@brazoswifi.com> wrote:
I respond with “The support number is: 979-985-5912”
Short and sweet (maybe not sweet). Often, I am on call in the evenings so
I end up answering the support call but It is customer training. I don’t want
people calling/texting my personal cellphone and then getting pissed off that I
don’t respond in a timely manner (vacation or whatnot) when I have paid support
staff at the office. Additionally, if they call my cellphone, I tell them the
same thing. The sales and support number is: X. I will be happy to help you
there.
We record 100% of the business calls due to some he-said/she-said
incidents. I don’t talk business on the personal cellphone unless the call is
routed through the PBX.
Jim Bouse
Owner
Mobile IT Pro - Brazos WiFi
979-985-5912
j...@brazoswifi.com
From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Brandon Yuchasz
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2016 8:19 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: [AFMUG] Customers texting cell phones "hey my internet isn; t
working"
Wondering if anyone else has dealt with this and if so what they used as a
solution.
I am getting more and more texts from customers as time goes on. They get
my cell phone number at some point when I call them or from a friend or who
knows but they hold onto it.
Instead of emailing the tech support or calling in they send me a text to
my cell phone. “hey my internet isn’t working” . I don’t know who the hell
they are of course since its just some random number with no context. So Then I
am faced with ignoring the text or replying. “ I’m sorry but I don’t know who
this is from can you please give me additional information. “
Text back and forth over the next 15 minutes reveal they have the wireless
turned off on their computer or the router took a shit or they are off line.
Regardless it’s annoying, I have considered asking them not to text my cell
phone and instead call or email but half the time they are still going to get
me. That’s not ideal. Please don’t text my cell phone instead use our online
contact option or call us at…. 5 minutes later I get a call that forwards to my
cell phone not ideal. although that is changing and hopefully in the next 6
months I won’t be doing any tech support calls anymore.
How do you guys deal with this from a company standpoint.
Just so everyone realizes it… this is at least 65% rant so sarcasm and
honest real feedback are both welcome.
--
If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as
part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team.
