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| reply to xspectre6266
Re: [Cable] Delays and Outages - status This is the 2nd time this year where my modem fails to obtain a DHCP address. In my opinion, it's a technical issue which could be resolved if all parties involved had sufficient interest in doing so.
It is interestingly suspicious that I am able to subscribe to 300 GB of data transfer per month via Teksavvy for as little as about $30-35 per month, but the only way to do the same with Bell is by subscribing to their "Fibe 175" package at $152/month or their $30/month option if I have 2 services in the Bell Bundle package.
It is interestingly suspicious that I am able to subscribe to a Rogers package which allows me 250 GB transfer for $126/month.
It is interestingly suspicious that this outage is coincident with the new fall season of T.V. shows, and / or show finale episodes (35-56, we're looking at you)
Listen up people, the "SPEED" is not important here. I am totally OK with a "SLOW" connection @ 7mbps. Yes, ridiculously slow 7mbps. What's important is the amount of data you can transfer. Because BELL AND ROGERS are both trying to protect their empires by limiting the amount of data you can transfer in any given month. They are trying to protect us from using Netflix and other on-demand systems, which marginalize their insane "investments in traditional broadcasting".
So I propose the following:
Marc, you should start a kickstarter campaign.
For whistle-blowers, like the middle-managers and technicians who are ordered from high above to configure the backbone which disrupts 3rd parties from delivering connectivity.
How about a $250,000 whistleblower reward to any current employee of Rogers or Bell who has knowingly caused harm to a 3rd party because they wanted to keep their job? Or a $1,000,000 reward via kickstarter to any manager who has a stock option plan and also knowingly ordered a subordinate to configure the Rogers or Bell network to cause a service disruption to 3rd parties?
You have 200,000 or more Teksavvy customers, and I'd be on the list of those who would donate $10 to such a campaign.
The internet is supposed to be open, but obviously not in Canada. Let's make it so it is.
SECRET HASH: 5JRL4W7DD63
(so that if I wish to claim this post publicly some day in the future, I can prove it)
(posting from some random Bell wifi hotspot in Toronto and a spoofed notebook MAC address) | |
|
said by J Williams :It is interestingly suspicious that this outage is coincident with the new fall season of T.V. shows, and / or show finale episodes (35-56, we're looking at you) That's... kind of brilliant in an insane evil genius kind of way.
When I was with Rogers (up until Aug 30th) I had cable and internet. I used the internet for Netflix, but due to their lower bandwidth, couldn't really use that as my primary form of TV watching. At one point I threatened to leave, and they gave me a great deal (like 35 bucks for their 45 Mbps internet with 150 down). After a while, I realized that I didn't really need TV, so considered dropping my cable package and using internet only. That's when they told me the deal they gave me was only if I had internet as well.
Anyway, I dropped them completely, got Hulu+ and switched to TekSavvy. I can now watch all the same TV shows I did before on the internet, watch them on my own time, and I never have to deal with rogers "let's try to make the worst software available for a PVR" PVR again.
Only... now I can't, because my internet is down. And, now that I've cut the cable cord, no internet means no entertainment at all, since everything I do now is streamed. No TV shows as the fall season is starting, no Breaking Bad finale.
So, I think you're right. Rogers saw they were coming to the end of 3Q with lackluster growth (or no growth) across their internet/cable divisions. They saw nothing in the pipe for 4Q, and were terrified that their quarterly report was going to kill them on the stock market. They know that more and more young people are ditching cable TV, and more and more people are tired of them and ditching them for internet too. They also saw the perfect storm of back to school (college students need internet!) and fall TV season, and played their trump card. I'm sure this plan has been on the back burning for a long time, waiting for the time the company REALLY needed it.
At the end of this, I'm also sure that Roger's had done nothing (or very little TECHNICALLY wrong. They'll probably get their hand slapped, and some stricter terms may be implemented, but the damage has been done. It's not just about the customers that will be leaving TekSavvy for Rogers. It's that even the customers who stay will be a little more reluctant to suggest their friends and family switch to TekSavvy. Even those of us who believe in "the cause" will be a little more tempered in our proselytizing, telling people "it's great, but you have to be willing to through extended downtimes because Rogers isn't playing fair". The reputation of resellers will be hurt, and will take a long time to recover.
My only (very faint) hope is that the CRTC takes this seriously. What needs to be done isn't putting more rules in place, what needs to be done is a complete separation of ownership of last mile infrastructure and content provision. What needs to be done is either the infrastructure has to be nationalized, or Rogers needs to be split into two companies, a wholesale seller and a retail provider. Of course, that won't happen, but hey, we can dream, no? | |
Bruno_s4
join:2011-12-14
Richmond Hill, ON | reply to TSI Marc
In Richmond Hill with Teksavvy Cable.
Have been down since Friday Sept 27 (so 6 days) and I'm royally pissed!
There doesn't seem to be an end in sight!
Every time I call for an update it takes well over an hour to talk to tech support and they never have new information for me.
Finally opened a ticket last night... like that will make a difference...
Extremely frustrated and ready to jump ship back to Rogers even though it will cost me $18 more per month for the same package. (25mb). | | |
|
| There are 2 issues to me it seems like.
1) Technical. Rogers seems to have pulled a stunt designed to sink TekSavvy. There is no other explanation for it. Everything I hear and understand puts the technical problems squarely in the court of Rogers. They are doing everything they can legally (and even that is questionable) to drive TekSavvy customers away and back into their arms. Here I think TekSavvy is doing all they can, because really, there is little they can do.
2) Customer relationship management. This area is completely in the court of TekSavvy. Here I think they are underwater. They have staffed for steadystate (or more likely steadystate + x to account for growth and wanting to keep a high level of customer service) and been caught with their pants down. No company in the world has enough staff to deal with this kind of situation immediately, but what matters is what they have been doing to deal with it.
Now, they can try to throw more people at the problem (more tech reps) but that will likely backfire, as they will need to pull manpower off to train them, and then likely throw them in only partially trained and just end up with customer who wait in long lines to talk to a tech who doesn't know anything.
I think the real answer is they have to work smarter not harder. They have to triage the problem more appropriately, put effort into automation. If someone is having the same problem as 1000 other people, don't use a full troubleshooting cycle on it. Either find a way to automate the communication, or create a new work flow that shortens calls.
They also need to control and own communication more. If I have put in a ticket (automated or not) they need to be categorizing those tickets and sending off email blasts daily. If I am having DHCP issues in Ajax, send an auto email to all of those in Ajax telling them the status. Hell, if there is no update, tell us that! | |
 TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | Hi Stevel, 2 is not at all in our court. As it stands right now we are seeing nearly 300% more calls than forecast for the day... When users are offline, they call, and call.. And call... Multiple times a day. Despite having recently hired a large amount of additional staff we are still unable to keep up.
As soon as these problems are solved, you will see an instant return to good wait times. We are working very efficiently and making sure that whatever we do, we are doing well even while these problems persist. You can observe that there are little complaints about errors being made, there have been some, and we have found and corrected the root causes however to a large degree we have worked very hard over the past year to work as efficiently as possible.
Even things like the mail server problems have now stabilized.. We found the root problem...
We have done everything we can to manage this situation. We are monitoring absolutely everything very closely, minute by minute in the contact center. Constantly diverting resources where they are freed up to best handle the front line without sacrificing and making errors elsewhere.
I'm open to ideas on how to divert calls away from the contact center though and we have much in the works however at this time there are no silver bullets... These network issues, more than I have ever seen at a given time, must simply be fixed in order for things to function properly. Why are they not able to do upgrade or maintenance without throwing our users offline? Something is very wrong with their process for it to leave our users offline for days at a time.
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| said by TSI Marc:Hi Stevel, 2 is not at all in our court. As it stands right now we are seeing nearly 300% more calls than forecast for the day... When users are offline, they call, and call.. And call... Multiple times a day. Despite having recently hired a large amount of additional staff we are still unable to keep up. Hi Marc,
As I said, I do not think the reason for the calls is at all your fault. I also do not think you could have prepared better before "shit went down". You probably had a conservative estimate as to the reps you needed for the level of support you wanted to achieve. You probably even had contingency to deal with something going wrong. What you did not expect (and I don't think anyone could have) was that Rogers was going to deliberately target you in an attack designed to raise 3Q numbers for them, and steal your customers. It's shady, and I think you're doing all you can on that front.
That said, your response to the situation (my number 2) is absolutely in your court. You have options. Some of them good, some of them not (as I said, doubling your client reps now would probably be a disaster, but it's an option). You do not have to throw up your hands and say "oops, what can you do" (and I know you're very much not doing that).
I have outlined suggestions in another thread, but I will put them here as well. I know there are no silver bullets, there is no "one solution" to the problem, only a myriad of cobbled together solutions that will each help a little bit.
1) Communication. This does not have to be personal (let's face it, you have no manpower for that anyway). Assuming you have appropriate tracking ability (to who has submitted tickets, who is offline, etc) you have the ability to update people. Send out an email a day to those in affected areas with an update. The update can be "We are still having DHCP issues in your area, we are working with our vendor to get them resolved as soon as possible". All it has to be is an acknowledgement that we (the customer) are still on a list, and we haven't been forgotten about. If you want to get fancier, assuming you have some kind of database with ticket status and such, have personalized (but automated) emails. It should be simple to create a program that goes through your list of open tickets and emails each person daily with a status "your ticket is still with our Vendor" "The vendor has responded that your modem has been provisioned, please follow these instructions", etc. Some people will be calling in 4 times a day because they want to be heard. You can't stop that. Other people (possibly the majority) are calling in because they want to HEAR. They just want to know that YOU know they are still offline, and what the current status is. If they hear from you first, they are much less likely to call.
2) Triage. I've written at length about this in another thread, but the basic point is to upgrade your phone in system to be more dynamic. If I put in my account number/phone number, the system should be able to tell me if I'm in an affected area, what to do, and whether I need to stay on the phone to create a ticket. For some issues (DHCP) if people were told outright that TekSavvy knows they are offline, they are working on it, and there is no need to create a ticket, they'd be happy to get off the phone and reduce wait times. Also, the phone system should give us a current average wait time. Let me decide if I want to wait for 2 hours. If the wait time is 2 hours (and people know it) many people will just hang up. If it's 2 hours and people don't, they will be waiting for 1 hour, then not hang up because they've already invested that 1 hour.
Things like this could be done with minimal investment depending on the flexibility of your systems. Even if you don't have the right people on staff, hiring a contractor for technical changes is quite doable (and if you need people, let me know  ).
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention what I thought you were doing well. I think the promotion with wind sticks is brilliant. It shows that you care about your customers being online, and understand that in some cases it's a necessity and not a luxury. So kudos on that.
Also, please don't read my post thinking I'm criticising your handling of this. I think you have done well with the hand you've been given. That said, there is always room for improvement, no? | |
Xinit
join:2013-09-29
Canada | Hell, I'd just be happy if I wasn't sent on make-work projects to keep me busy for 5 minutes, and further delay a ticket being opened by another 12 hours. I THINK I've submitted all the proof of busy work in the direct forum (which could all be more obvious for those of us who've never had the need to open a ticket). I'm just glad that I have alternative access to Internet... anyone without is stuck sitting on the phone for hours, only then to have to possibly have to hang up, do the busy work, and call back again later. An email integrated ticket system would be nice, rather than navigating this forum through a smartphone, etc.
I submitted all the information, and have been waiting another 12 hours since my last post... No idea if I have a tech visit scheduled, no idea if there will be some bit of data that's missing, etc. Should I book off work to wait on a tech or not? Text me, Tweet at me, email me... No, instead just wait for me to notice that you replied to a forum post? I know there's a lot going on, but this passive support is a bit aggravating.
I've paid for a hotspot from Wind, and am over-paying for their pay as you go data to allow me to survive since Saturday morning when my connection dropped. I assumed it would only be a day or two, so why pay for an entire month of service from Wind? Oh. Yeah.
So, my sunk cost for this four day long outage so far is about $140 in replacement equipment and data costs. Oddly, I'm finding the Wind 3G to be faster than my cable connection has been before the outage... | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Stevel
all good Stevel.
1) I agree and this is already in the works.. it requires backend systems to be created. its touchy stuff because if the automated message is not in line with what is actually going on... it does the opposite... it pisses people off more. so, there's a balance aspect to it, it needs to be fine tuned. That makes it not as easy as it might seem to implement... and also not in short order. We've had these things planed for some time and without going into too many details, we have many new internal systems in the works however at the present time there is no shortcut. These are all features that we have not needed in the past and that we still would not need if these problems were not happening the way they are...
2) I agree. The problems are not in specific large clumps... so it becomes a problem to "know who is affected"... its more like random postal codes.. we're working on trying to find a way to localize where the problems are as we also feel that the outage notifications are way too broad and they absolutely overstate the scale of the individual problems however, there's no easy way to do it.
as for opening tickets.. we have to open tickets for each case because they are all in small pockets.. we have mapped out the outages on google earth.. we can show where all the troubles are and there is no easily discernible clump that we can tell customers.. oh you are for sure affected by this, just wait it out. i.e. We're not wasting time on the calls.
We have really been pushing hard to do everything we can... your suggestions are great. But they're not something that we can just change instantly what we're doing and suddenly it will all work.
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
Xinit
join:2013-09-29
Canada | if the automated message is not in line with what is actually going on... it does the opposite... it pisses people off more. Heh... I think it was on Sunday that I last called, and about every 10 seconds, The Voice listed off all the outages. At least it didn't tell me how Important My Call Is at that frequency... but I gave up on the phone at that point. | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | it's not normal for users to be offline for days at a time....
I'll see what more we could be doing right now, without any system changes to give more feedback to those with tickets already opened.
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| reply to TSI Marc
Only one short question to Marc: when will it be resolved and we get our cable internet back??? | |
Xinit
join:2013-09-29
Canada | reply to TSI Marc
Of course it's not normal... I've never had an outage like this, so knowing what to do to open a ticket isn't something I'm practiced in. I think that's the biggest gap right now, and it was the most frustrating for me, personally. No internet access, so the obvious first choice is telephone. | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Irina
said by Irina :Only one short question to Marc: when will it be resolved and we get our cable internet back???
boy, if I knew that... it would make all of this much easier. That's the same question I have for Rogers.
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| reply to TSI Marc
Hi Marc,
I certainly know it's not easy or instant (I'm an IT project manager, so used to the... fun of IT improvement projects). I guess I just can't help myself from going into "solutions mode" when I see a problem come up. I am glad you are pursuing solutions that will help (or at least help if a problem like this happens again, since hopefully by the time it is all online this crisis will be mostly over).
Look on the bright side, assuming you are implementing these changes in a smart, sustainable way (which I have to assume you are) once things are back to normal, all of your process and back-end improvements will just serve to give you a leg up on the competition. Some companies pay good money for a stress test on their system that you're getting for free!
Anyway, good luck with it all, I'm sure you haven't gotten much sleep over the past month, and I think your team is doing admirably given the situation. Once this is over with, you need to take them all out for a drink (after you let them sleep). | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Xinit
said by Xinit:Of course it's not normal... I've never had an outage like this, so knowing what to do to open a ticket isn't something I'm practiced in. I think that's the biggest gap right now, and it was the most frustrating for me, personally. No internet access, so the obvious first choice is telephone.
right... so everybody calls in.. causing the long wait times...
the issue for us of course is that we are not getting any feedback.. so, what you are saying is that you want a "no update, update"... just let you guys know that we have not yet received an update and that it appears the issue is on going still...
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
Xinit
join:2013-09-29
Canada | reply to TSI Marc
Not trying to be facetious, but as to what more that could be done, I think my first suggestion would be to have speedier than 12 hour+ turnarounds on issues in the Direct forum. It's as much of a frustrating black hole as the telephone queue.
There's still unanswered posted there from 8:30 last night, about 12-18 posts ahead of mine, so should I assume that my post won't be addressed until the end of the day today? Do I have a ticket with Rogers/Bell yet? No idea. | |
Xinit
join:2013-09-29
Canada | reply to TSI Marc
Well, even acknowledging receipt of information that we provide would be something. | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23
1 edit | reply to Stevel
said by Stevel:Hi Marc,
I certainly know it's not easy or instant (I'm an IT project manager, so used to the... fun of IT improvement projects). I guess I just can't help myself from going into "solutions mode" when I see a problem come up. I am glad you are pursuing solutions that will help (or at least help if a problem like this happens again, since hopefully by the time it is all online this crisis will be mostly over).
Look on the bright side, assuming you are implementing these changes in a smart, sustainable way (which I have to assume you are) once things are back to normal, all of your process and back-end improvements will just serve to give you a leg up on the competition. Some companies pay good money for a stress test on their system that you're getting for free!
Anyway, good luck with it all, I'm sure you haven't gotten much sleep over the past month, and I think your team is doing admirably given the situation. Once this is over with, you need to take them all out for a drink (after you let them sleep).
I hear you about problem solving mode.. I've gotten loads of advice.. all great ideas.. we've been implementing many changes on the fly to best handle things.. and we continue to do so... it's a bit of a whack-a-mole problem... shifting from one thing to the next trying to keep everything somewhat in check... all the communication with rogers is via email... no automation is possible... so we have a team of people that all they do is process the info to them.. and process the info from them... it's incredibly inefficient...
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Xinit
said by Xinit:Not trying to be facetious, but as to what more that could be done, I think my first suggestion would be to have speedier than 12 hour+ turnarounds on issues in the Direct forum. It's as much of a frustrating black hole as the telephone queue.
There's still unanswered posted there from 8:30 last night, about 12-18 posts ahead of mine, so should I assume that my post won't be addressed until the end of the day today? Do I have a ticket with Rogers/Bell yet? No idea.
I'll see why that's the case... as more and more people go to the direct forum and other methods of support... we have to grow that team as well... i.e. your solution to not being able to handle the load, is to handle the load... know what I mean?
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| reply to TSI Marc
said by TSI Marc:I hear you about problem solving mode.. I've gotten loads of advice.. all great ideas.. we've been implementing many changes on the fly to best handle things.. and we continue to do so... it's a bit of a whack-a-mole problem... shifting from one thing to the next trying to keep everything somewhat in check... all the communication with rogers is via email... no automation is possible... so we have a team of people that all they do is process the info to them.. and process the info from them... it's incredibly inefficient... Feel free to ignore this post, but I can't resist (I don't know what's wrong with me).
I assume your initial ticket submission process to Rogers is at least semi-automated? What I mean is, even if you use email to submit your original ticket, you can you a front end program to populate it. Potentially even pulling customer information, address information etc from your central database and using dropdowns for common problems (ie, if it's a DHCP issue it will auto-populate which lights are on, what the IP says, etc).
As for the communication from rogers, I have to imagine it isn't standardized (if it was, you could easily have a bot read emails and populate tables). If this were a normal business relationship, I'd be going to Rogers to have them standardize their email process so that's possible, but since they probably have no incentive to make your lives easier, that may be easier said than done. | |
Xinit
join:2013-09-29
Canada | reply to TSI Marc
Well, that's kind of the idea, that you have to handle the load. What else is there? Excuses?
I've worked on that end, so I get that things can be out of your hands, but on this end, I don't know a damned thing about what's going on.
It almost sounds in some of your responses that you're blaming customers for wanting to know what's going on, for calling in, for posting threads on the direct forums... know what I mean? | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Stevel
generating them on our side and submitting new tickets is not the issue. it's the back and forth... everything is manual. they respond... we have to read the email that generally just says something like "try to reboot modem now".. no reason as to what or why.. of even if anything was done. so we have to then decipher that and create internal tickets to either call the customer... email them.. whatever it may be.. and then respond to them again... then escalate if needed...
we have asked in the CRTC submission for improvements on this...
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Xinit
said by Xinit:Well, that's kind of the idea, that you have to handle the load. What else is there? Excuses?
I've worked on that end, so I get that things can be out of your hands, but on this end, I don't know a damned thing about what's going on.
It almost sounds in some of your responses that you're blaming customers for wanting to know what's going on, for calling in, for posting threads on the direct forums... know what I mean?
I completely agree.. and obviously not blaming customers..
the thing is that there is no way to curb it. what we need is: notice ahead of time that they will be doing maintenance and in what areas so we know who might be affected and how long it is likely to be a problem.
we need them to fix their process so that it doesn't leave our users offline.
we need better communication with their help desk (i.e. a contact person that we don't have now)
we need responses to our inquiries.
we need.. we need...
it's a near total failure on all levels. read the CNOC CRTC submission... it's all detailed in there.
see post here: »[Cable] CRTC - CNOC Part 1 Cable Carrier Services & Update
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| reply to TSI Marc
said by TSI Marc:generating them on our side and submitting new tickets is not the issue. it's the back and forth... everything is manual. they respond... we have to read the email that generally just says something like "try to reboot modem now".. no reason as to what or why.. of even if anything was done. so we have to then decipher that and create internal tickets to either call the customer... email them.. whatever it may be.. and then respond to them again... then escalate if needed... Haha, I'm sorry to laugh at your pain, but that is so terribly archaic it's almost funny. It's like Rogers designed the least efficient system possible. The cost of implementing a B2B information system would be so trivial it's ridiculous. With a well designed system, your response times could be almost negligibly longer than Rogers itself, and if you spent the money on the system, you could easily add in easy customer portals and communication avenues that would make any customer drool.
Of course, that would depend on Rogers buying in (even if TekSavvy offered to fund the whole project, I'm sure they would refuse, even if they saved time/money on their end). They are obviously doing the minimum necessary to meet their commitments. I just wish the regulating officials were more "tech savy" and held them to account.
At least they didn't insist all communication was done with them via fax or registered mail. | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | no you're right.. its laughable. see the CNOC CRTC submission I linked to above... it's all in there.
we have asked for access to their systems...
for our part, it is forcing us to do extra crazy things that shouldn't be necessary... we are and have been spending the money on our side.. but it will require them as well for sure.
--
Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| I've been without internet for over a month now waiting for Rogers to provision a new modem.
Part of the problem I've encountered is that TekSavvy wasn't getting back to me when Rogers had supposedly responded to my tickets. An extra day or two of delay for each ticket update and escalation has cost me a considerable amount of time.
I've spent way too much time doing the same things over and over with the results not improving.
You'd think that at some point I would have been offered a temporary alternative while we wait, but nope. | |
| reply to TSI Marc
The problem with requesting access to their system is that they can come out with valid arguments as to why you shouldn't have access (security concerns, intellectual property, infrastructure costs and investments, etc). That will either lead to you being denied outright (security) or potentially asked to shell out large amounts of money for access to it.
If it's purely one way information you need, may be better to ask for a sterilized data dump connection, which you can then build your own infrastructure around. If it's a 2 way system (for something like tickets), you would almost certainly have to build it yourself, but they would have to keep it updated. I suppose even with a 1 way data dump (with problem ticket information) you could build a hybrid system that would integrate their ticket update information into your system, and send out emails based on your reps input, but that would be a pain.
I never realized how difficult it would be working with a company that doesn't actually want you as a customer. Presents some interesting dilemmas (I guess less interesting when it is negatively impacting your business).
edit:
Based on the other poster (and my experience) I agree that there seems to be a time lag from when Rogers responds to a ticket, and when the TekSavvy customer is told. What access do you currently have to their ticketing process, or is that just them emailing you saying "yep, done"? | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23
1 edit | said by Stevel:The problem with requesting access to their system is that they can come out with valid arguments as to why you shouldn't have access (security concerns, intellectual property, infrastructure costs and investments, etc). That will either lead to you being denied outright (security) or potentially asked to shell out large amounts of money for access to it.
If it's purely one way information you need, may be better to ask for a sterilized data dump connection, which you can then build your own infrastructure around. If it's a 2 way system (for something like tickets), you would almost certainly have to build it yourself, but they would have to keep it updated. I suppose even with a 1 way data dump (with problem ticket information) you could build a hybrid system that would integrate their ticket update information into your system, and send out emails based on your reps input, but that would be a pain.
I never realized how difficult it would be working with a company that doesn't actually want you as a customer. Presents some interesting dilemmas (I guess less interesting when it is negatively impacting your business).
by access to their system.. I mean an API.. system to system interface of some sort... anything really.
--
Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:23 | reply to Stevel
said by Stevel:Based on the other poster (and my experience) I agree that there seems to be a time lag from when Rogers responds to a ticket, and when the TekSavvy customer is told. What access do you currently have to their ticketing process, or is that just them emailing you saying "yep, done"?
I don't think that's the case. We have been especially focusing on exactly that.
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Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
| reply to TSI Marc
Ok, fair enough, I thought you were referring specifically to their tools, not just their data. I was just trying to think of ways they could not argue against. Depending on the system they use, if they had to give you a custom API, it would also be problematic. They would need to expend effort to develop it, would probably half-ass it, etc. The only reason I suggested a pure raw-data dump is that them arguing against it would be difficult (though admittedly possible).
"But, you see, we don't have the 2 hours necessary to write a query and set it to auto-run and email the results in CSV format every hour... we're really backed up here..." | |
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