[MLB-WIRELESS] Melbwireless users to pay for Sneeze's e-mail flames?

[Toliman]

At 09:58 PM 4/02/2003, you wrote:
>No, not quite. But this announcement casts community-based helpdesks such as
>Melbourne Wireless in a very good light.
>- Barry

we help ? i never agreed to that ...
i must have missed that meeting.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dan Warne <dan at whirlpool.net.au>
>To: Media Alert <dan at whirlpool.net.au>
>Date: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 9:41 PM
>Subject: Bigpond users to pay for tech support?
>
> >Hi all,
> >
> >Just thought I would draw your attention to a story we've published tonight
> >on Whirlpool - "Bigpond users to pay for tech support?"
> >
> >Telstra has been surveying users on whether they would pay for tech
>support.
> >
> >The question asked to customers was whether they would pay a monthly fee
>for
> >faster resolution of tech support problems.
> >
> >I had an interesting chat with Justin Milne, Telstra Broadband Chief, and
> >I've published his comments in the story.
> >
> >http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1070?show=replies

This is a riotously funny article.

I can't speak highly of telstra, because while this article was being 
published, i was working in the field of said discussion. while it is not 
unilaterally true, bigpond support is simply one step above asking a 12 
year old Fijian to configure your internet connection. To make the 
situation more plain, the 12 year old Fijian would probably fix the problem 
sooner having never used a PC or read any  English before. most ISP's 
contrive to "assist" the customer, the same could not be said for most of 
the many arms of bigpond support.

Firstly, Telstra has so many sub-departments, divisions, managers and so 
many of those are outsourced divisions, offering premium support on a 
premium-enriched service like bigpond is skimming from both ends. as a 
helpdesk employee, i can tell you that without any doubt, priority queues 
are handled by the same people that handle all the other calls. if this 
service were to be implemented, you would get exactly the same level of 
free support you would get from a regular (non-bigpond) ISP, where they 
call back and "assist" with a problem... without you having to pay for the 
premium of being called back the same day/ hour. you would not be informed 
of outages any sooner, or get any elevated privileges, bar the escalated 
calls and trained monkeys asking to click the start button on a mac... or 
asking you to turn the ADSL modem off and on after an authentication outage.

Telstra's great strategy has always been the "premium" approach, where the 
symbolic link between premium price and quality is their promise (lure). 
when the customer finally finds the service is a facade that is outdated, 
unhelpful and slow to respond to changes, they leave. and they don't come 
back. Knowing how eccentric people are about their internet carrier 
preferences, it is inevitable that they "will" implement premium support, 
those "armless managers" will be creating the outsourcing contract this 
week.... and that there would be no tangible difference to any regular 
non-bigpond ISP helpdesk for the tariffs.  this will just be telstra 
evolving to the standards of service that the industry has adopted for a 
long while.

There are a few exceptions to the article, IT support is the single 
greatest cost "without return" of an ISP business expenditure ... like 
buying stationery, coffee and tea, secretaries, drugs, hotels and cars for 
managers, etc. the actual hardware and network peering through other ISP's 
is for most ISP's the greatest single cost. Of course, if you don't own the 
extensive network and bandwidth, and have simply been pimping government 
owned infrastructure, the costs are reduced.

"As a sidenote, we also asked Justin a question which he chose not to 
answer: These changes seem to be focused on customer retention once they go 
off contract. Will there also be some improvements in plan value for 
customers currently on contract, or already off contract? "




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