Fixed Wireless Technology

ISPCON: Wireless Truck Roll Tricks

The veterans say there's a myriad of ways to improve the efficiency of your truck rolls.

by Jeff Goldman [December 19, 2006]

At the ISPCON session Truck Roll Tricks: Installations that Maximize Time and Money, moderator Tom DeReggi of RapidDSL & Wireless discussed how to find the best way to eliminate the inefficiencies in truck rolls that are unique to wireless providers. "The way that money is made in this business is by installing customers," he said. "And the way you install customers is you schedule them and meet your deadlines—so how do you make all these processes work together to get customers installed in the most efficient way, at the lowest cost, so you can be profitable?"

Panelist Donny Smith of Jaguar Communications said the purpose of the truck roll reaches far beyond just hooking up the customer—it's about increasing the value of your business. "That means to either make money or save costs," he said. "You save costs by making shorter truck rolls, and you make money by selling things when you're out there, or by doing services for the customer."

The question then is, what's the installer's job during the truck roll? "Is it to go install the wireless radio, or what else could we get from that technician?" asked DeReggi. "How do we maximize the value of the fact that that truck went out there?"

The tech could be a low-cost worker whose only job is to install the radio, or could be a more advanced technician who's able to provide support during the install, or could be a salesman. Understanding and clarifying the tech's role, DeReggi said, will help you determine how long the truck roll should take.

DeReggi suggested your installer should be your upseller, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the install. "It's going to be your opportunity to identify new leads—who you're going to sell to tomorrow," he said. "If that person qualifies and has a need, the neighbor probably will also."

And he (almost all in the business are male) should also be the documenter. "He's going to take all the information about what he did and bring that back to the office so you can plan better and have more efficient tech support, because you know more about the client," DeReggi said.

Taking more time
An audience member commented that the low-cost worker idea used to work for him—until malware became prevalent. "If they've been on dialup, I can guarantee you they have adware and spyware on their machines—and when you hook them up, they're not going to get a high speed wireless connection; they're going to get a very slow connection," he said. "We've seen that on every single customer in the last six months—so now we're selling spyware removal, adware removal, and things like that."

As a result, he said, installs can now take two to three times as long as they used to—or more. "Some people's machines are so badly infected, it can take five hours to remove the software from the machines," he said.

Smith agreed—last year, he said, he was seeing an average of 47 minutes per truck roll. This year, it's closer to 100 minutes. That's partially due to malware, but it's also due to a growing demand for video over IP—wiring a home for coax or Ethernet takes a lot of time.

On the malware front, Smith said he's found that convincing the customer of the need for spyware and adware removal is also frustratingly time-consuming. "Believe it or not, that's about 10 or 12 minutes of that extra hour," he said. "So to do that, you have to now have technicians that are salesmen—and most of us know that that isn't what technicians are."

To make that easier for his techs, Smith instituted a simple form with checkboxes for each additional service the technician can offer. "$5 charge for this, $10 charge for this—it comes back in, they just drop it in the box, the secretary takes it off to billing (I realize that's kind of manual, but that's how it works in our company), then it hits the billing area, and they actually get billed for it," he said. "Until we instigated this checklist, they did all of this, but they'd forget to tell billing—for us, this year, there's an increase of $18,000 in revenue, and they're doing exactly the same work they did last year."

To allow for the extra time that work can take, Smith said he's started scheduling very loosely, allowing for each install to take much longer than it used to. And to provide the extra manpower required, he's taken a couple of internal CO techs and reassigned them to outside work. "Then, when the scheduling gets caught up or ahead, which it invariably does because we end up with some short ones, we move them back into the CO," he said. "It isn't too efficient, but it's more efficient than losing customers for not getting caught up."

Making the most of it
DeReggi said that in his area, regardless of the tools he uses—Google Maps, RadioMobile, etc.—about 60 percent of his potential installs turn out not to work, no matter how promising they may look in advance. "So what do you do when you get there?" he asked.

An audience member said his solution is to use satellite as a backup. "When they're looking for the install, we say, 'We'll come out there and do a site survey, and if we can't hook you up, no cost, but we also provide this product—and there's a 90 percent chance, as long as you have a view of the southern sky, or if you have DirecTV or Dish TV, that we'll be able to service you,'" he said.

Similarly, DeReggi asked, what can be done in advance to ensure that each truck roll is as productive as possible? Everything makes a difference, from keeping cinder blocks available in the office to making sure that the truck is loaded correctly the night before. "The actual install itself, if you have everything you need, really doesn't take that long," he said.

Still, planning everything as thoroughly as possible can take time as well. "There's a lot of management involved in making sure that [your installers] have what they need," DeReggi said. "And that's not just at the tool stage—that's at the equipment stage, that's at the purchasing stage, every stage of the operation."

And at the site, DeReggi said, avoiding giving the client too much latitude can also save time. "Don't force them to do anything—but if you steer them in the right direction and then you ask for their confirmation of what you're suggesting, that goes a lot quicker than just asking," he said. "We got that process down from 20, 25 minutes to about five before they actually started working, just by having the right questions to ask and cutting right to defining what they were going to be doing."

The bucket truck option
The discussion turned to bucket trucks and the efficiency that they can bring to truck rolls—DeReggi recalled that when he started out, he calculated the cost of the truck, gas, maintenance, etc., and decided not to get a bucket truck, a decision he's since regretted. "I can tell you that every person I've asked who had a bucket truck has said they're glad that they've had it, and it was the best purchase they ever made," he said.

Smith pointed out that you can achieve the same results for a lot less money by simply befriending a local electrician. "Most of them have bucket trucks, and most of their bucket trucks sit around most of the time, and they're more than happy to rent one out for $100, $150 or $200, depending on where you are," he said. "That's going to be a lot cheaper than you can maintain it, unless you're using it quite often."

In closing, an audience member offered an even more elaborate option: he has a trailer with a 40-foot extendable mast on it. He pulls up at the customer's location, puts the mast up, and tests the link from there—if that doesn't work, he can walk away from the deal without having taken a single piece of equipment off the trailer. And if the link does work, he knows the exact height at which he needs to install as well as the speeds to expect. "That trailer's made a major difference for us," he said. "It really has."

—End