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What do you do on a average day running your WISP? |
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Written by Start a WISP Site Admin
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Tuesday, 28 June 2005 |
"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."
bito:
This is no "average day"
Rockostimpy:
I agree with bito, there is no "average day".
wispman:
There is only one thing I can count on. NO PAYCHECK and 80 hr weeks.
IntraLink:
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.
polk5:
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.
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
IntraLink:
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.
superdog1:
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!
Original thread location
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Business Operations