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Every customer you retain is a customer you don' t
has to replace. More important, happy customers send you new customers. Service
is key.
As an ISP, your middle name is 'service.' Good
service is critical to retaining customers—which, in turn, are critical to
attracting new ones. It's a fact: Most ISPs report that the largest number of
new users comes from referrals—and only happy customers will refer new ones to
you.
The term 'Quality of Service' (QoS), has undergone
an evolution—from a descriptive phrase, to a quantifiable attribute of what
you, as an ISP, sell to your customers. QoS is usually expressed in a
percentage of uptime, such as 99.9 percent, or as 'how many 9s'. Many business
customers are now looking for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that commit you
to a specified QoS level—and often mandate a monetary refund for your failing
to meet that commitment. Do you know what your QoS level is?
Even if your customers don't demand one, you should
make a SLA with yourself. That is, commit yourself to providing a certain level
of service. It should cover uptime, busy signals, throughput, and many other
technical issues.
Keep yourself
honest
The hardest part of providing technically superior
service is in measuring it— a prerequisite to figuring out what needs to be
changed.
·
Do
you know how many busy signals you have?
·
What
is your user-to-modem ratio?
·
Do
you know how many dropped calls you have during busy times?
·
Do
you know what your uptime is?
·
Do
you know what your Internet access capacity usage is?
Once you develop answers to these questions, then
you can use them to improve your service. In turn, the improvements become
central to your marketing. If you can prove your QoS commitment to yourself, it shouldn't be hard to
convince customers to use your service.
To outsource
or not . . .
Customer services—both technical and on the billing
side—is an area that is often overlooked.
If
you are considering outsourcing, keep in mind that in doing so you will
relinquish something approaching 50 percent control over the quality of your
customers' experience. Customers will now have two points of contact, in
separate locations and with different organizations. You'll need to make sure
that your outsourcing provider represents your company in a way that reflects
favorably on you. Check up. Call your outsourcing provider posing as a user. Do
it a number of times, at different times of day; see how they handle you. Think
about it from a customer's standpoint. Do you want the person answering the
telephone to represent your company?
If
you keep customer service in house keep an eye on average call times and—more
importantly—hold times. Users seem to deal pretty well with hold times in the
5-minute range, but as hold times stretch to 10 minutes, they become
increasingly upset. Average technical support calls are around 7 minutes. I'd
recommend making pretty darned sure you don't exceed this.
One customer-service aid well worth implementing is
a call tracking system. First of all, compiling a permanent history of all
interactions you've had with each customer helps your staff personalize
service. Second, keeping comprehensive records of problems that come up helps
you proactively improve your operations, resulting in happier customers
overall. And—to say it one last time—“happy customers refer new customers to
you . . . and you profit.”
Keeping Customers: Part 2 - Relationship Building
A low-key non-relationship with customers may be
okay if you're a monopoly like the local telco or power company—but not if
you're an ISP.
As an ISP, you have to deal with churn. Churn is the
number of users that terminate service with you on a monthly basis. Most ISPs
admit to a churn rate of 2 to 3 percent per month—or between 25 and 33 percent
per year! If your churn rate is typical, then, you've got to bring in more than
2 percent of new business every month just
to stay in the same place! To actually grow your business, you need to do
significantly more!
Special content
One key to lowering your churn is to offer services
or content that your users can only get from your ISPs. Many ISPs have taken
the first step in this, which is to localize their home page. A number of
services, such as Planet Direct(http://www.planetdirect.com),
Snap!(http://www.snap.com), and LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com) make
this fairly simple by providing cookie-cutter local content that ISPs can use.
A
better idea is a 'Members Only' section. This can house local content, plus
many other things that users will find useful. Members Only sections can and
should include items such as; a member's forum, specials or coupons, a user web
ring, a system update page, and any other information you feel you can give to
your users. I've seen ISPs post employee bios, employee of the month features,
pictures, and many other little items that give the ISP a personal feel.
Subscribers love it!
Communicate regularly
Another way to maintain a relationship with
subscribers—one that's met with a high level of success—is to publish a
newsletter, either via e-mail or via postal mail. E-mail is of course cheaper,
but you can easily put a print newsletter in with your invoices and have a much
better impact with your users.