Internet Service Providers

"The big ISP’s get a lot of flash and dazzle in the press," says Mark Povitt. But there are still tons of us little guys out here, taking care of smaller business and home office types who want more service than just a net hookup. Our customers want to know that we know them and care about them. For a lot of them we ARE their IT shop: they don’t have anyone on staff that really understands this stuff. They don’t know or care that I’m buying access rights from top-level providers. They just care that we handle their needs when they NEED it. That’s why I decided to resell Universal Office services to them as well.

Using it – In Depth:

We sell to people who are running a business out of their home, or a three desk office in an industrial park. They need a messaging system that works in that environment, not some monstrosity that’s going to take up half a closet somewhere and be obsolete an hour after it’s in. The Universal Office fits that bill just right.

At first, we just put in the Universal Office for our own needs. I’ve got two guys who do field work, and a rotating crew of about three or four more folks who handle customer support calls. The Universal Office let us tie in all our calls and messaging services with our email and pagers and cell phones and everything, so that the customers get service like they’re calling in to a huge call center.

Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this sort of service could work just as well for lots of my customers, AND let me tie them straight in to my support network. Now I try to sign as many of my customers up for Universal Office service as possible. Ever try to send someone a network problem notice by email? Hey – there network is DOWN, so they aren’t going to get that email until the problem is fixed anyway, so what good is it?

Whenever we have a problem or there’s a network outage upstream somewhere, I just send out an Audiogram. This is Mark in the Network Operations Center, letting you know that there’s a communications problem in the Ackworth area. You may experience slow or no Internet connections for a short while. We have technicians working on the problem, and expect to have things back up in about an hour. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s fixed. Heck, most of the time no one’s even SEEN a problem before they hear that, and now they don’t have to call to ask what’s going on.

“What does the Universal Office mean to them? They get great messaging service, we can give them better customer service than any of our competitors, and we actually add a little to our bottom line at the same time. Sound like a win-win-win to me!”