Best of the ISP-Lists

Fixed Wireless Business

Good Billing is Good Business

The customer is number one until the bill is overdue.

[March 1, 2005]

On the ISP-Wireless list in February, JH complained:

"My most recent two months have been more stressful than normal. I had a company providing me a service that would have been nice to have but I couldn't get them to listen to the problems their service was causing my customers and me. My customers are #1. If my service doesn't work like I have stated, I do everything to make it work and listen to problems and help as much as possible.

[I was treated badly as a customer]. A customer only cares how they feel they are personally treated in any given situation. No one ever said customers were reasonable human beings!

So just make sure that all of your staff realize that it's not the boss who pays their salary but the customer."

SC agreed, but said that some customers are not worth the trouble:

"Not all customers are good for you. Being selective is important as a business owner. I agree that the customer is fundamentally what feeds all of us every month and keeping them happy should always be a priority. However, when our customers become past due at the 60 day mark, regardless of the excuses and/or problems, service stops. There is no excuse for being 60+ days overdue after the appropriate e-mails and phone calls. I just don't buy the, 'I didn't get the e-mails, I didn't receive any of the voice mails, but I had a problem.'"

[NS demurred] "We had to set our shutoff day at 8 days past the due date. We cater to a college town and one of the biggest problems we have is kids leaving and not canceling their service. We bill on the 25th, it is due on the 10th, and we cut off on the 18th. Of course we call and email at least twice. Of course turning someone "off and on" is a 2 minute ordeal, tops. If they call and say that they will pay when they can we work with them. However the 60 day leniency is a thing of the past here. Basically we talk and act big, but 9 times out of 10 we will work with someone who is willing to work with us. Because $1 is better than no $."

JF introduced the subject of automated billing:

"All our billing is automated. They either pay by credit or debit card, or we draw from their checking account. We expect all funds to be available on the due date, so that is the date of the first attempt. If they do not have funds available, we will attempt twice more, at 48 hour intervals. After that they are suspended.

They get an e-mail after each attempt, indicating that we were successful, and thanking them, or that their service is in danger of being suspended. It's almost always a good call because nothing good can come from delaying the inevitable. We keep the CC files up to date by requesting updated info when they are about to expire. The most common reason is a change in CC accounts, different banks and such. By not letting the billing go into 30 or even 60 day arrears situations, we see very few non-pay disconnects. Letting them go several months is a sure way of losing many customers who will never catch up."

[NS replied] "automated billing aaaaaaaahhhh! lucky dog!" [sic]

[GO suggested] "We use Platypus for our automated billing. I could never imagine going back to the days of not being automated. The cost of a good automated billing solution is paid back in spades with the efficiency you get in terms of labor and containment of accounts receivable. There are other cheaper solutions you could use to get you there."

NS complicated the issue:

"We are in the process of looking at a few. We need something that will work for hotspots as well, so a random person can find our hotspot and give a credit card number and be given a user name and password automatically. Any ideas?"

[KM recommended] "You might want to check out Sputnik. You can run their backend systems on your own box or use their hosted service. I took a serious look at it amongst similar options and it seemed, IMHO, to offer the best options for the value. I'm not affiliated with them."

[TB asked for more] "On that same note, we're looking for a RADIUS package that will allow for bitcap limits. We currently run RadiusNT for our dialups and it works well but doesn't transfer over to wireless for us. My thoughts on the ideal RADIUS server (not the cruddy 802.1x stuff) for an ISP or WISP would do the following:

• Allow for time banking (number of hours per month), a low priority
• Allow for time of day connections, a nice plus.
• Disable expired accounts automatically, a high priority
• Disable bitcap exceeded accounts automatically, a high priority.
• Easily integrate with an ODBC source, a must have

Any other thoughts that members could contribute would be appreciated.These are just the first few that come to mind."

[Ed. note: it appears the industry is still waiting for this to come to market.]

—End