Re: The MSN Messenger

["Moe Allen" <moe () vidnet net>]

Well, we are one of those small ISP's.  Our company, over the past 6 years, had an association with a larger ISP. This 
larger ISP had customers in a Metroplex area as well as customers in South America.  

If you believe in the old adage, all things are equal, when everyone is running the same two programs (MSIE & Netscape) 
and same type of equipment, then the percentage of trouble tickets would be the same in a small ISP as it would be in a 
large one.  On one occasion the President of the larger ISP call and ask if I could come down for a meeting.  So I did. 
 The main topic of this meeting was, why were we having less customer complaints, than the big boys.  Both companies 
were handling everything the same.  My answer was, we started a Help Desk.  Everytime something went wrong, I sent out 
an e-mail.  The e-mail detailed the problems and how long I thought it was going to take to fix.  

If during the repair, we found it was going to be longer, I sent another e-mail to our customers.  Upon repair, I sent 
another e-mail and explained the problems and include, if the repair was a band-aid or a solid repair.  I also e-mailed 
our group about planned outages, C&W problems, etc.  Well it have been 6 years and I am still writing the e-mails.  But 
now, we call the "Vidnet -- Alerts" 

 In our last poll, I asked if our customers wanted the "Alerts" stopped.  To my surprise, a 100% of the users that 
replied stated, "No, keep up the good work."  So, I don't believe you can go wrong,  if you keep your customers 
informed.  It doesn't matter if you are an ISP or a Software Company.  The more information you can supply to the 
customer, the happier the customer.  Even if they don't understand everything in the e-mail...
Respectfully,
Morris Allen
President
VidcomNet, Inc.