When was the last time you had a service provider tell you the issue you are experiencing is not their fault and you need to call the other guy?
Consider this... six months ago you opened your first business, and everything is going well. You arrive on Monday morning, pick up your first phone call of the day and the person sounds choppy and gargled. You're able to get what you need from the customer, but you know your next task is to call your VoIP provider and see what they can do about the previous call. You spend the next hour talking to the customer support agent, running tests, and calling back and forth. Right when you think you’re getting somewhere, the support agent tells you the problem is with your internet service provider and there is nothing they can do to help. You are dumbfounded. You just wasted an hour and now you need to call the internet service provider. You call, but you're nervous and you’re wondering how many people you are going to have to talk to before this gets fixed...which is not a good feeling. You’re stuck on the phone, you still have a problem, and you’re not able to give your business the attention that is needed. What do you do?
When you use a business solution that involves more than one business partner, you need to understand how they approach a problem. Do they attempt to eliminate themselves from the issue and make the customer responsible for solving the problem, or do they get involved with you and work together as a team? At Voxox we take a customer centric approach.
In the past, I have been in the situation described above many times. When there was a problem, we would contact the VoIP service provider. Unfortunately, far too often I was told that there was no issue with their system and it must be the other guy. This is a very common position to take when there are multiple vendors involved. As the Director of Technical Support Services for Voxox, I use my past experiences and take an approach to providing service that is aligned with the customers’ point of view. I call it the Voxox Approach.
With a Hosted VoIP solution, there are a minimum of three systems involved: the office network, the internet service provider and the hosting VoIP provider. As the Hosting VoIP provider, we expect to be called first when there is an issue. The initial investigation for each provider should be fairly common: get a clear understanding of the problem, identify what has changed, try to replicate the issue and then track a call from the sender to the receiver. If you're able to find an issue that you can change, solve the problem and make the customer is happy. It’s when an issue is not found, that the finger pointing begins, and the resolution of the issue is delayed. With a customer focused approach, we request a conference call with the internet service provider and IT company managing the office network, and work together to solve the problem. Taking this approach we increase the possibility of obtaining a quick resolution and a happy customer.
Since taking this approach, Voxox has seen a reduction in average resolution times and increased customer satisfaction, which are two good indicators that this is the right approach for our customers.
