[Asterisk-biz] ITSP Rant

[Robert Goodyear]

On Mar 30, 2005, at 4:29 AM, steve szmidt wrote:

> On Wednesday 30 March 2005 01:19, alex at pilosoft.com wrote:
>>
>>> Here's the thing: Customer Relationship Management is not difficult. 
>>> It
>>> requires very little overhead to build a relationship with a 
>>> customer in
>>> such a way that those customers become that company's evangelists and
>>> stick around for the long run. When things level out, it's going to 
>>> come
>>> down to where the customers have gravitated that determines the 
>>> lifespan
>>> of an ITSP. And customers will gravitate AWAY from a provider that
>>> thinks customer service should only be directly proportional to cost 
>>> per
>>> minute. I firmly do NOT buy the argument that because minutes are 
>>> being
>>> offered at such a steep discount, you're on your own for support.
>>
>> Actually, *that* part is not wrong. You are buying wholesale service 
>> - you
>> shouldn't really expect handholding similar to one that Vonage (say)
>> provides (or should provide anyway) to a grandma with a SIP adapter.
>
> Whoa! You have been buying into something which is simply not true. It 
> is very
> simple and quite workable to service your customers. In my business of
> servicing and receiving service, I can tell you from experience that 
> it is
> not a problem. Not to say that there are not people in most companies 
> who
> should not be doing certain kinds of work, like servicing others.
>
> If you don't realize that your wholesale customers are more important 
> than
> your end user customers you are setting yourself up to loose.
> -- 
>

Exactly! Where do these people think *most* customers come from? If 
they realized their outside sales force is generally the resellers and 
not their own staff, they'd want learn a thing or two about 
relationship management.