Every successful business has multiple goals. Usually, each goal — increase revenue and reduce costs for instance — requires a different strategy. It’s rewarding when you find a simple solution that checks every box.

This article demonstrates how managed routers will:

• Reduce support cost
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Support long-term subscriber relationships
• Provide better visibility when solving problems
• Increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
• Reduce staff frustration and stress

Phone Diagnostics are a Pain

Customers call with a variety of issues. Some WISPs agree that nearly half of the issues the customers experience are WiFi related. But, as staff gathers information about the issue over the phone, it’s clear that most customers don’t know the difference between WiFi and the actual internet – many think they are the same thing.

And, because a WISP’s demarcation point ends at the CPE – and you can’t control which router they plug into the CPE – your team has little visibility into a potential source of the issue.

If your policy is to troubleshoot simple matters over the phone, your staff can tell you how difficult it can be to get a clear picture of the problem when hundreds of different routers are in play. Elderly or impatient subscribers compound the issue, which leads to frustrated customers and staff.

Rather than have customers perform diagnostics on their bottom-of-the-line routers, why not save your staff the hassle and amp up customer satisfaction with quality managed routers?

And, what about the techs that are sent to the location and get frustrated to find it’s an easy fix that the subscriber could have completed with proper instructions? It’s not the office staff’s fault — they don’t know the equipment. Why put everyone through unnecessary pain and effort?

Guarantee high quality equipment with managed routers.

Managed Routers Reduce Stress and Staff Involvement

The biggest reason to offer managed routers is to ensure your subscribers have a reliable router that integrates into your network.

When you rely on subscribers’ router choices, you’ll be stuck with the cheapest and low-quality routers. And, when there’s a glitch, your staff wastes their time and patience on calls with customers who are only too happy to blame your service, rather than their choice of equipment.

If you think that reducing staff frustration isn’t important, know that U.S. businesses pay 2.9 million dollars a day to find replacement workers. That totals more than one billion dollars a year[1] —  what are you paying?

Plus, with so many brands out there, your staff can’t know how to troubleshoot every router. Often a technician’s on-site visit will have to resolve things — even when it’s not your issue, but lack of understanding by your customer.

It’s not their fault – subscribers don’t know better – but, you do. Don’t risk that good staff will quit in frustration when you can do something about it.

If you choose a reliable, value-priced router and sell or lease it along with your internet service, your staff will be able to get to know it and be efficient at diagnosing problems.

Higher ARPU, Less Work, Greater Customer Satisfaction

Raising ARPU is a matter of increasing the amount of money your subscriber spends with you without increasing the cost to keep them. As mentioned earlier, managed routers tick all the right boxes.

When you offer routers, you can either sell the router for a one-time cost or lease them to subscribers for a fee every month. The additional revenue boosts ARPU. And, if you can reduce your back office employee’s and tech’s involvement in correcting problems, ARPU soars.

Another benefit of choosing a router for your entire network is greater transparency. This allows techs to pinpoint or eliminate the router as a source of the problem fast, which further reduces the time invested.

Finally, with fewer network problems due to quality equipment and better-prepared staff, your subscribers will be happier, too. That’s important because as Harvard Business School states, a small 5 percent increase in retention can increase long-term profitability by 25 to 95 percent.[3]

Improve transparency and staff satisfaction.

Router and Vendor Choices

You or your technicians might have a preference for a specific router or vendor. You should choose the router that works for your WISP, but also consider routers that are:

• High-quality with high performance
• Easily managed by all support agents
• Centrally managed and searchable to locate customers rapidly
• Mutually beneficial to subscribers and you as a company

Your goal is to create long-term relationships with your subscribers. You do this by providing the best service. And, this should be your goal for vendors, too.  Rely on the best possible partners for your routers, field equipment and billing system to ensure you have a team that has your success in mind through thick and thin.

Get industry-leading customer support with a scalable, complete billing and automation system, and features for long-term profitability. That’s what you get when you partner with Visp.net. How important is your success?

Thank you, Annie Pratt, Stephen Phillips and Steve Halama for providing the images for this article. You can find more of their work on unsplash.com. 

[1] 8 Employee Engagement Statistics You Need to Know in 2020, Jan. 2020, SMARP online: https://blog.smarp.com/employee-engagement-8-statistics-you-need-to-know#:~:text=Overall%2C%20companies%20with%20high%20employee,workplaces%20saw%2041%25%20lower%20absenteeism.

[2] Ndukuwu, D., What is ARPU and How Do You Calculate It, May 2019, PayKickStart online: https://paykickstart.com/what-is-arpu/

[3] Reicheld, F.; Shefter, P., E-Loyalty, Your Secret Weapon on the Web, 1990, Harvard Business School online: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/the-economics-of-e-loyalty