Voyus offers outsourced helpdesk services with a solid technical background and the flexibility to adjust its offering to meet an ISP's needs.

by Jeff Goldman [October 8, 2003]

Voyus was founded in 1998 as Velocity Computer Systems, focusing on systems integration and corporate support. Just over a year ago, the company purchased PCSupport.com and shifted its focus to remote support and helpdesk services. In addition to offering corporate and warranty hardware support, Voyus now specifically targets ISPs and WISPs.

According to John Wigboldus, Voyus's Director of Business Development, the company's background in systems integration serves it well in providing helpdesk support. "We're not a run of the mill support provider; we're not just a bunch of script monkeys," he says. "All of our techs are certified, either as an MCSE or an A+ or something along those lines."

Voyus Voice: (888) 225-1157 sales@voyus.com

Ultimately, Wigboldus says, the company's greatest strength lies in the quality of its employees. "We really try to make a difference with the customer," he says. "We're strong on retaining our employees, so we don't have a lot of churn, and we're able to get some familiarity with our customers. And our tools are good."

Support is available via phone, chat, or e-mail, as well as desktop sharing. For WISPs and hotspot providers with less urgent queries, Wigboldus says e-mail can be particularly useful. "In the Wi-Fi space, a hotel may have connectivity in certain parts of the building, but they may have dead spots, so the hotel manager will just e-mail us—and we can work with them from there," he says.

Integration for improvement
The company's Voyager software offers real-time access to call data, allowing the ISP or WISP to monitor issues as they're being resolved and to view call statistics. The software also allows for live escalations, which Wigboldus says is a key strength. "If somebody's network is down at a certain location, we can actually escalate to the onsite technician in that area who can then go out and fix the router," he says.

That kind of integration with the ISP and its technicians, Wigboldus says, is a key focus of Voyus's offering. "The purpose of outsourcing is to lower your costs and find economies of scale," he says. "The tradeoff is always trying to make it seamless to your customers. Because of the way the Voyager software works and because of how our team integrates with a particular provider, we truly become an extension of them."

Using the software and the data that it provides, Voyus works with the ISP to reduce the number of incidents and to find ways of improving their services. "We're not a call desk who are just answering calls and trying to give things a best effort," Wigboldus says. "We basically put our money where our mouth is and say, 'Here's what's going on with your customers.'"

Pricing is available per-subscriber, per-minute, or per-incident. The services are also available either nonbranded or fully branded; the branded services require a set-up fee and additional charges. Still, Wigboldus says that being located in Canada gives Voyus a 20 to 30 percent price advantage over U.S. companies. "Because we have an exchange rate advantage, we can get to a lower price," he says.

From inhouse to outsourced
Claudia Ng is the Chief Operations Officer for FatPort, a Canadian Wi-Fi provider that maintains more than 100 Wi-Fi hotspot locations in Canada and also provides the back-end system for a number of other Canadian WISPs. Until recently, FatPort's own employees provided all technical support for end users, answering the calls on their cell phones as they came in.

While it may have added to their workload, Ng says that answering their own support calls in the beginning was an excellent way to learn about the kind of support their customers needed. More importantly, in the early days, there weren't too many calls to answer. "Back then, it was more manageable," she says. "But it quickly became unmanageable, so we started looking for an outsourced solution."

FatPort's offering, Ng says, presents some challenges for any support provider. "The service that we provide is pretty cutting edge, and it involves a lot of new technology," she says. "Our helpdesks need to be a lot more technical—in a very specific way—than a general helpdesk would be. So we looked for a company that specialized in doing technical helpdesk services, as opposed to just a general call center."

The company signed up with Voyus two months ago, and Ng says they've been happy with the results. "We've been getting a lot of great customer feedback on how professional and knowledgeable they are," she says. "Our customers don't necessarily know that it's an outsourced helpdesk; it looks and feels very integrated to FatPort. But even if they do know, they've been having a very good experience."

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Related articles:
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	[Oct. 31, 2002]	Covad and FatPort Work Together
	[Jan. 15, 2002]	FatPort: Damning The Economic Torpedoes

Online resources:
	Outsourced Customer Support Directory
	Quick Reference Chart