Main number fail-safe solution for small ITSP
I'm curious how other small VoIP providers handle having a fail-over for their main (support) phone number in case their entire infrastructure is unable to take calls. I know we all build in redundancy, but for the big what-if scenario where nothing is available and the calls fail, you still need to take your customer support calls. We have one carrier who does PSTN failover, but they're far from our primary or an ideal carrier for us. None of our major origination providers do this. -- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
Put your tollfree on another resporg (or run your own resporg) and set it up such that you can redirect your number to an answering service. On 10/12/2012 01:25 PM, Carlos Alvarez wrote:
I'm curious how other small VoIP providers handle having a fail-over for their main (support) phone number in case their entire infrastructure is unable to take calls. I know we all build in redundancy, but for the big what-if scenario where nothing is available and the calls fail, you still need to take your customer support calls.
We have one carrier who does PSTN failover, but they're far from our primary or an ideal carrier for us. None of our major origination providers do this.
-- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
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On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Paul Timmins <paul at timmins.net> wrote:
Put your tollfree on another resporg (or run your own resporg) and set it up such that you can redirect your number to an answering service.
I guess I should have clarified that this is a local number, not toll-free. Changing it now is possible, though not simple. It's hard enough to get people to stop calling the sales person's DID after they become a customer and need support. I see there are other responses that I haven't read, but thought I should provide this clarification right away. -- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Carlos Alvarez <carlos at televolve.com> wrote:
I'm curious how other small VoIP providers handle having a fail-over for their main (support) phone number in case their entire infrastructure is unable to take calls. I know we all build in redundancy, but for the big what-if scenario where nothing is available and the calls fail, you still need to take your customer support calls.
We have one carrier who does PSTN failover, but they're far from our primary or an ideal carrier for us. None of our major origination providers do this.
Over the years, I've done a variety of things. One that worked fairly well was to provide subscribers an alternate "emergency only" #. It goes to an answering service 24x7. Completely segregated infrastructure (get the # from the answering service, or get a TF with a carrier you don't use, and have it routed to the service). It always works. And you have someone else taking the calls. If you've got an outage scenario, you can instruct the answering service what message to give callers - and you don't have a phone that has to be answered. In reasonably high-end relationships, an escalation list with cell phone #'s works. It's generally not mis-used, and if it is, well, time to dump the customer. I am aware of companies that figure that if their customers can't get through on the phone, they should "get the message". Others rely on the web, which, if built properly (no shared infrastructure) is an easy way to communicate. And ... PSTN failover doesn't deal with some failure scenarios inside the provider. Even the biggest of the big sometimes have regional catastrophic failures. -jbn PS: As I hit send, I see an incoming message from Paul Timmins who appears to also be a fan of an answering service, although with a good twist.
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Justin B Newman <justin at ejtown.org> wrote:
Over the years, I've done a variety of things. One that worked fairly well was to provide subscribers an alternate "emergency only" #. It goes to an answering service 24x7. Completely segregated
As noted in a previous message, we have issues just getting people to call the main number instead of a sales DID, so I'm not sure how we'd educate them on this. I like the idea from a technical level though.
In reasonably high-end relationships, an escalation list with cell phone #'s works. It's generally not mis-used, and if it is, well, time to dump the customer.
Our high end customers do have our cell numbers, and they don't abuse them. We had one abuser and as you said, we simply fired the customer. But we really don't want to give that to all customers because the smaller ones do abuse it. Not on purpose, they just go, oh let's call this cell everyone always answers that. They end up trying to use it as the first number they call. Took us years to undo that.
I am aware of companies that figure that if their customers can't get through on the phone, they should "get the message". Others rely on the web, which, if built properly (no shared infrastructure) is an easy way to communicate.
Yes, I wish people would look to our help desk first (outsourced) but only maybe 10% do. The rest pick up the phone if they have a problem. Some time ago we had one major outage and everyone tried to call first, then were upset that our main number didn't work. Although we've done a lot of redundancy improvement since then, I'd still like to have an absolute fail safe on that number.
And ... PSTN failover doesn't deal with some failure scenarios inside the provider. Even the biggest of the big sometimes have regional catastrophic failures.
This is true, but we have our DIDs and main numbers with different carriers. When we've experienced an origination carrier issue, people can get through on the personal contact DID number. -- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
We have established trunks directly from one or more of our carriers directly into our office phone system and now do not run much of our own office systems over our own network explicitly to prevent this sort of nightmare scenario from playing out. Obviously at that point your selection in origination carriers may become the trouble point, so I would make sure the origination carrier is truly carrier grade, or you can publish multiple support contact numbers which come through different carriers. Also consider leveraging out of band communications for that nightmare scenario where the infrastructure has experienced some kind of critical failure and realistically your poor support team will be unable to do anything save for act as customer punching bags. Twitter, livechat systems and announcement webpages can all be excellent for communicating with your customers in these scenarios. On 10/12/2012 10:25 AM, Carlos Alvarez wrote:
I'm curious how other small VoIP providers handle having a fail-over for their main (support) phone number in case their entire infrastructure is unable to take calls. I know we all build in redundancy, but for the big what-if scenario where nothing is available and the calls fail, you still need to take your customer support calls.
We have one carrier who does PSTN failover, but they're far from our primary or an ideal carrier for us. None of our major origination providers do this.
-- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Have pri's or sip trunks from a totally different carrier for your support lines. Carlos Alcantar Race Communications / Race Team Member 1325 Howard Ave. #604, Burlingame, CA. 94010 Phone: +1 415 376 3314 / carlos at race.com / http://www.race.com From: Carlos Alvarez <carlos at televolve.com> Date: Friday, October 12, 2012 10:25 AM To: VoiceOps <voiceops at voiceops.org> Subject: [VoiceOps] Main number fail-safe solution for small ITSP I'm curious how other small VoIP providers handle having a fail-over for their main (support) phone number in case their entire infrastructure is unable to take calls. I know we all build in redundancy, but for the big what-if scenario where nothing is available and the calls fail, you still need to take your customer support calls. We have one carrier who does PSTN failover, but they're far from our primary or an ideal carrier for us. None of our major origination providers do this. -- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
participants (5)
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carlos＠race.com -
carlos＠televolve.com -
justin＠ejtown.org -
paul＠timmins.net -
ryandelgrosso＠gmail.com