canuk wisp
join:2005-05-30
London, ON | What do you do on a average day running your WISP?
Just curious what you guys do on a adverage day in the course of running your wisp.
monitoring, installing, selling, golfing (o: lol ETC...
just curious as to how your day goes by on average.
canuk |
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bito
Premium
join:2001-10-08
Atlanta, GA | This is no "average day"  |
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DSLbyAir
Premium,MVM
join:2003-04-10
Ocean Springs, MS | I agree with bito, there is no "average day". |
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wispman
join:2004-12-21
USA | reply to canuk wisp
Re: What do you do on a average day running your W
There is only one thing I can count on. NO PAYCHECK and 80 hr weeks.  |
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IntraLink
Premium,MVM
join:2002-08-14
Utah Valley
| reply to canuk wisp
Re: What do you do on a average day running your WISP?
After three years of operation as a WISP we've come a long ways to automating and stabilizing our network.
I deal mostly with things that break now including customers equipment that is not our responsibility, but that prevents then from connecting to the internet.
It's still nearly impossible to convince a customer that it's not our job to fix their crappy old Windows 98SE install that is loaded with spyware and viruses for free. |
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John Galt
What...me panic??
Premium
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp
| said by IntraLink  :It's still nearly impossible to convince a customer that it's not our job to fix their crappy old Windows 98SE install that is loaded with spyware and viruses for free. Isn't this spelled out when your customers subscribe...??
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A is A |
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IntraLink
Premium,MVM
join:2002-08-14
Utah Valley | In a perfect world, yes, the customer would be well aware of all 6 pages of our Terms of Service.
We seem to lose sales after about the first half of page one though |
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canuk wisp
join:2005-05-30
London, ON | reply to canuk wisp
intralink... what things did you do to automate and stabilize your network??
curious what things one should do to make your day to day operations run "smoother"
just curious. |
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polk5
join:2001-12-29
New Orleans, LA
| reply to canuk wisp
Answering tech support calls throught the day is a given. Cell phone bill used to be over $300.00 a month until Nextel came out with free incomming.:D Check logs on kiosk in the morning while doing a couple shots of espresso. Do billing for the previous day before leaving shop. Catch 3 or 4 service calls that were called in the day before. I schedule one estimate a day at least. In the evening I usually spend a couple hours or so building kiosk, Programming or whatever. Other than that Im either climbing a tower, installing an alarm system or rebuilding a network at one of the hotels. I love this business.LOL  |
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IntraLink
Premium,MVM
join:2002-08-14
Utah Valley
| reply to canuk wisp
This is where we are heading:
Sales handled mostly by answering service.
Installs handled mostly by contractors.
Billing handled mostly by part time accountant.
Tech support handled mostly by answering service.
Marketing handled mostly by contractors, mailers.
Infrastructure mostly handled by me.
I'm not a fan of the regular business stuff, so I've tried to automate or deligate most of that to someone else for as cheap as possible and still get good results.
I do like to add cool new features and speed/reliability to the network myself. I do like planning and implementing server changes, tower installations and backhauls.
Recently we've made several changes that have gone a long ways towards helping our customers and ourselves get the most of our system.
1. Get a real billing system. We've selected Platypus as our billing system, but there are many others out there. Platypus is powerful in that it can do just about anything you can dream up; if you are technically inclined. Ours costs us around $200 a month.
2. Get an answering service. The one we are with right now is not technical, but they are inexpensive and can direct customers to follow guidelines in the FAQ's before escalating issues. They are also trainable on sales calls. Ours costs around $200 a month. If you want technically savey people that can fix common networking/windows issues plan on paying around $1.95 per customer per month.
3. Get a part time accountant and train them on your accounting system. If you plan everything right you can get everything done on about 10 hours a month, or around $150-$200 a month.
4. Get a team of trained installers to work flexible schedules part time. This runs us around $29-$60 an install. At the moment this requires someone to manage the team and schedule. However that could also be automated with a little web design, creative email system or robust ticketing/scheduling system (we use Wombat).
5. Give incentives for customers to refer people to your network and for contractors to promote your business so they get installation work.
I think my biggest goals have been to smooth out the Sales to Installation scenarios. Tracking information can get to be a real hassle at around 10 customers per week. That's one of the reasons we chose a billing/ticketing system that works together and is SQL based. If I want the system can notify me of any event that occurs and program up email addresses, redirect non paying accounts and re-connect them all automatically. Because it's all SQL based I can choose to give my customers as much information about their account as I want including billing options, bandwidth usage etc. |
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snowpro2000
join:2004-06-13
Canada | 29 to 60 dollars an install? Wow... do any of them want to live in Canada?
Could you describe a typical installation for 29 bucks?
Sounds like a deal to me. What do these guys eat!
Paul |
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superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
| reply to IntraLink
Re: What do you do on a average day running your W
I start out by gettin' coffee, hitting Korys and this website, and then tearing into what ever has to be done. We are not very aggressive right now for customers, so installs are at a minimal. I return phone calls for the first hour or so and check emails at the same time. Since we have an insurance brokerage and apartment buildings, I have no clue as to what happens next on an average day. Last week, I was painting a building with a sprayer, and then climbing a tower 2 hrs later because I thought a radio had worked its way loose. Sometimes I am on the phone answering both insurance and WISP calls and programming a radio at the same time. I have on average 3 computers running at the same time on my desk, mostly because of all the different types of software that we use(Citrix, Brilan etc..)and the hassles that go along with firewalls and passwords. I also have 2 phones with 3 separate lines. This can be fun doing technical support and dealing with all of the sales people. This is just the tip of the ole' iceberg!:)
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»www.wavecrazy.net Join WISPA today! »www.wispa.org/ |
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korym
Go Wisp's
ExMod 1999-03
join:1999-12-23
Richmond, VA
clubs:
| said by superdog :I start out by gettin' coffee, hitting Korys and this website, and then tearing into what ever has to be done. :: blushing ::
Thx Tim! |
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kewlkeed
Grouch
Premium
join:2005-02-05
Knowlton, QC
| reply to canuk wisp
Hehehe DEFINITLY no such thing as an average day...
Lemme just give a quick rundown of the last 2 weeks to give an example...
Week 1
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Monday - Both main feed lines go down totally. Backup 5.8 links don't take over since we did not have reliable equipment. Call provider and they say "Everything is fine". Finally came down to pounding on the door of the Bell CO building to get a tech to look over his desk and say "Ohhh wow didn't notice that alarm light before!"
Tuesday - Email provider (Hostrocket) has been blacklisted so emails aren't passing and Hostrocket has now decided to stop dealing with the problem. Customers fuming. So we decided to host email "in-house". OOOOPS looks like the new card at the CO that was installed on monday has a glitch. The pipes are now going up and down like a yoyo every hour.
Wednesday - Main feed pipes are STILL going up and down. Nobody at the CO anymore since it's unmanned normally. Call provider, they say "Everything is fine". Call Bell, "Sorry you're through another provider, they need to sumbit the ticket to us" Call back provider and yell, stupid fool on other end can't understand english let alone whatever else he speaks. Get him to submit ticket to Bell finally. Meanwhile construction of email sever is under way. Emergency order for Tranzeo 5.8s goes out since our previous units were not reliable.
Thursday - Main feed STILL going up and down. Customers PISSED. Recieved new set of Tranzeo 5.8s to complete the backup links. Called provider to check on ticket, turns out they never submitted it. Email server built. Now waiting for DNS to populate.
Friday - Ready to dump our main feed providers. But no alternatives at the moment. Ticket finally gets submitted as "Customer recieving error packets" Bell checks the line and says everything's fine, but overlook the card in the CO where our problems are actually located. Email server finally back up and running. 5.8 Backup links up and stable so they now take over when the main lines dump (She ain't fast but she works)
WEEK 2
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Monday - Main feeds again still doing the dance. Screaming at provider and still nobody there can even understand what a DLSAM is let alone anything else. Ticket supposidly submitted. Don't care anymore, we're giving them the boot. Meanwhile new pipes have arrived to be installed on the weekend (How's that for service). Email server up and running and 5.8 backups stable. Nice smooth day, managed to get some new customers installed as well. Was too good to be true...
Tuesday - Backup pipe provider goes down for good. Call in and basically get "Well sorry but we can't help you" So we now are left without a backup. Pipe for all our servers were on same provider. So email down ONCE AGAIN! Customers ROYALLY pissed. Tried to switch the pipe over to a backup provider we had lined up in case original went down. Backup provider doesn't link up for some reason. Call in "Ohh looks like your authentication info was all jumbled... Sorry will be fixed soon" Get the backup pipe working. Meanwhile the main pipes have now started to Yoyo once again because they decided to be cheap and hook us into the same damn unit at the CO.
Wed - Had enough of email problems and decided to outsource to another host for the meantime. Main lines still doing yoyo and no response from provider. 5.8 backups now stable with other provider for the time being. And it's only lunch time......
UGH! Coffee can't save me now!  |
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