[Asterisk-biz] Flaky service and support

[Robert Goodyear]

On Feb 21, 2005, at 8:26 AM, Nathan C. Smith wrote:
>
>
> Don't you feel the old adage of caveat emptor and "you get what you 
> pay for"
> apply here too?

I don't, because, for example, VP Connect claims...

	"VoicePulse Connect! is the first commercial-grade origination and 
termination service that supports both SIP and IAX." ... "VoicePulse 
Connect! gives solution providers of any size, anywhere in the world, 
the ability to offer public switched telephone network (PSTN) access to 
their customers."

So, it is clear that they are selling a commercial product, intended 
for reselling, intended to be reliable. I take that to mean I can count 
on it to not require massive caveats and lack of resiliency if I were 
(crazy enough) to resell this product.

> We also need to consider a few other items:
> 1) historically telecom has not had "good customer service".  This is a
> subjective statement because "good service" means different things to a
> consumer compared to a small business or an ISP, but I will wager most
> people will agree by nearly any definition.  Why should we expect 
> things to
> improve because VOIP is now in the picture?

I don't. But what I've witnessed (and concluded anecdotally from 
others' experiences) is that in general, the VoIP providers are several 
standard deviations below the average level of responsiveness of even 
the worst tech OEMs or Service companies.

>   On the other hand, it would be
> an excellent opportunity for a new well-funded provider to make a 
> positive
> splash.

I couldn't agree more. Maybe I'm fishing for someone on the list to 
strongly evangelize one or two providers.

> 2)Most VOIP providers are small, they are geeks trying to make money 
> with a
> bleeding edge technology.  I don't know about you but to me geeks and
> customer service have almost always been mutually exclusive.

That might seem to be a funny characterization, but an example to the 
contrary would be my colo hosting provider, MaximumASP. I evangelize 
them every chance I can because I get amazing service AND rocket 
science :-)

> 3)Giving good customer service to a very technical product is 
> difficult.
> People of different technical backgrounds will attempt to use the 
> service
> and they must each be addressed at their own level of expertise to get 
> them
> started.  This is like the early days of the ISP when it took your 
> neighbor
> kid to connect you to the Internet because it was so much more 
> involved,
> technical and unrefined.

Hey, all I'm looking for is reliability. I don't expect ANY provider to 
help me with anything other than making sure what they're selling me 
works as advertised. Or the DIDs I prepaid for are provisioned, say, in 
less than two months' time. Or to make sure the DIDs I've had for the 
last two months don't ring disconnected or busy every 8 days for half a 
day. You know, stuff like that.


> I think if there is a point I'm trying to make it is this:  We are all 
> in
> this together, using an unrefined technology to make or save money, 
> and we
> should be glad there are as many providers as there are rushing in to 
> try to
> fill a need.  Let's support and recommend the ones that excel at 
> meeting our
> needs, whether technical excellence, customer service excellence, or 
> good
> pricing and availability, and offer constructive criticisms for those 
> that
> do not.

Yes yes. One minor point: I for one would be MORE than happy to pay a 
premium for DID VoIP service that's reliable. I could pay three times 
the average outbound per minute rate and still save money over the 
LECs, while also saving money on hardware and saving time/value money 
with Asterisk.

/rg