Wrangling Telecom Techs & Customer Service

First, have your facts in order: If you are having trouble with your voice/data service or phone system, it’s important to have good info. Particularly if it’s one of those ongoing problems that is hard to nail down and get fixed. Keep a basic trouble log. Include date and time of issues, a description of the problem, any temporary fixes, any info provided by vendors who worked on it and anything else you think is relevant. For one thing, it will enable you to cross reference to any traffic/error log info you may get. And the info is very valuable to techs that show up to work on the problem. It also provides you a record of things you can look back on over time to evaluate your system and vendor performance.

When you call in a trouble ticket:

1. Get a ticket number
2. Ask for an ETA
3. Ask how to follow up and with who
4. The second they miss the ETA, follow up and keep them honest
5. If they are dropping the ball in any way, don’t hesitate to escalate to a manager

Carrier and PBX techs are a squirrely bunch. Whether they are there to repair your voice/internet service or install new service, they want to fix/install things fast and move on to the next job. All too often this leads to passing the buck (ie, the well know exercise where the PBX tech points at the Carrier tech and vice versa) or perhaps just not checking their work completely. Thus it’s common for them to leave before things are truly 100%. My advice: Don’t let them leave! Thoroughly test everything you reasonably can: main numbers, toll frees, faxes and POTS lines, voicemail functions, internet speed, etc. Even check some of the things you think aren’t affected. It’s much easier to get a tech to stay a little longer than it is to get them to come back.

When you do get into a finger pointing situation where nobody will take responsibility, get them together to hash it out. Have techs from the various vendors meet on site to work through the problem. If you can, give them a couple days to prepare and collect data (eg, pull error logs, monitor/test circuits). Often times facing such a meeting motivates them to find a fix (sometimes they won’t admit it, the problem just mysteriously goes away) and avoid the meeting altogether. But if they do meet, in my experience, they almost always get to bottom of the problem.

Why "the cloud" doesn't matter

An article on TechRepublic.com today titled, Why "the cloud" doesn't matter, does a great job of demystifying "the Cloud". Despite the title, it's not critical of the cloud. Rather by explaining it, it should help people feel more comfortable with it.

Among other good points, it provides a simple definition: "Essentially, the cloud is little more than “stuff outside your company.” That “stuff” could be processing power, storage, networks, applications or any other bit of technical wizardry. When the CIO says she’ll “put that in the cloud,” all she is really saying is she will take something that was done in-house, and do it with someone else’s “stuff.” .... Often, the cloud refers to a third party’s applications, analogous to the enterprise equivalent of gmail or hotmail to employees."

If you are at all baffled about what "the cloud" actually is, I highly recommend you read the entire article.

Walking for Autism!

This weekend, my wife and I are participating in Walk Now for Autism Speaks to help find a cure for autism. Autism is the second most common developmental disorder in the United States affecting one in every 110 children born today. Despite some promising discoveries, the cause of autism is unknown and a cure does not exist. Research is crucial. Every 15 minutes another child is diagnosed with autism. Not only must we find ways to improve the quality of life for children and adults with autism, but we also must find a cure, and soon.

Please help us make a difference in the fight against autism by raising money for autism research and heightening public awareness.

- Donate online to Walk Now for Autism Speaks here.

- Donations can also be mailed to Autism Speaks using the donation form located on my page or send me a check made out to Autism Speaks.

Sincerest thanks to you for any amount you can donate, large or small!

Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Autism Speaks 501 (C)(3) Tax Id #: 20-2329938
Matching gift program: Many companies provide their employees with matching gifts. Please consult your employer on its matching gift guidelines and attach matching gift forms accordingly.

Taco Timeout!

Just a quick timeout from telecom to brag about some culinary accomplishments for a good cause. VDLc joined forces with our good friends at El Toro Barbecue last weekend to compete in the First Annual AZ Taco Festival & Competition. The all day event benefited Waste Not Arizona and featured live music, lucha libre wrestling, a tequila expo, a kid fun zone, a pepper eating contest and more. Thousands were in attendance.

I’m very proud to say our chicken taco tied for 1st place and we took 7^th overall! Considering we competed against some very good restaurants, it’s something to brag about.

Thanks to Sherri and Colin at El Toro Barbecue for including us, to KNCH Law Firm for sponsoring the team, and of course the festival organizers for a great event that benefits a great cause. Can’t wait to do it again next year!

http://www.eltorobbq.com/ • http://www.knchlaw.com/en/ • http://www.wastenotaz.org/

Video Post: TEM Superhero

Well, I thought I'd try something different to lighten things up. This is a typical conversation between a TEM consultant like me and a prospective client. It addresses common questions and misconceptions about what we do. I hope you find it informative and a bit humorous...

VOIP Basics: PVOIP vs. IVOIP

I attended a great presentation on VOIP* this week by James Gillespie, an industry expert and senior engineer with Trans-West Network Solutions (twns.com). He discussed a misunderstanding about VOIP services that I think explains why some people are scared away from the technology. These are my own acronyms, but his point was that there are two very different types of VOIP:

• Private VOIP (PVOIP): VOIP over private connection (WAN connectivity).
• Internet VOIP (IVOIP): VOIP over internet connection (public internet).

The key issue is latency (transmission delay), the enemy of VOIP. High latency causes poor quality voice calls. With PVOIP, you have your own private connection you can control to eliminate latency – calls don’t traverse the public internet. IVOIP calls do traverse the internet and, because it is public, nobody can control it. So when it’s crowded, there are traffic jams, i.e., latency. It’s like BMW trying to test cars on the autobahn rather than a test track. The autobahn is generally ok, but other cars are likely to get in the way at some point. On a private test track BMW has total control of the road and so can go as fast as they want.

Services like Vonage and Skype use IVOIP. These calls are sometimes poor quality because of latency that occurs on the internet. I think when people have one of these bad IVOIP calls, they get scared away from PVOIP because they assume it’s the same as IVOIP. Truth is, a properly designed PVOIP service consistently provides calls that are as clear as traditional voice services.

If you are considering VOIP, the key is to understand which service you are being offered, and then choose the one that meets your needs. IVOIP is more suitable for personal use where poor call quality might be tolerable. For most businesses, call quality is important, so PVOIP is a better solution.

* What is VOIP? It stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, which really just means transmitting voice digitally, as opposed to analog. It’s CDs vs. vinyl records. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voip

4 Year Slam!

While auditing a phone bill recently for a new client, I discovered they had been slammed by an LD carrier (slamming is when your LD carrier is changed without your permission). As is typical, this carrier was charging very high rates. Normally I could get a refund for the client, but in researching the situation I discovered the slam had occurred four years ago. Four YEARS. That’s a long time to be overcharged for something without noticing. Since the FCC (Title 47, Sectn. 64) only requires carriers to retain authorization records for 2 years, the client could not get a refund.

In my client’s defense, it was well buried in the bill, but the point is this: Don’t get ripped off. You need to read your phone bills. Scrutinize every line on every page. If you see something you don’t understand, call the carrier and ask. Don’t stop asking until you are confident that you know what everything is and that you are paying what you should for it.

An easy way to validate a bill each month is to simply identify what the total monthly charge should be each month. Take a bill for any month you know to be correct. Subtract from the Total Current Charges any usage-based charges (like LD) and all Taxes and Surcharges. This is the portion of your bill that should be fixed month to month. Do this calculation every month to ensure the fixed portion doesn’t change. Thoroughly validating usage can be involved, but you can at least validate the rates being charged. Validate Taxes and Surcharges by ensuring they remain a consistent percentage of fixed plus usage charges.