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What Software Should ISPs Distribute and Support?
BroadbandBradley asks: "Many ISPs give their customers a software package to install with their service like a branded browser/email package. Some also include network diagnostics tools, even remote connection VNC packages for technical reps to do remote support. The ISP will then tell customer that they'll only get help if they're using that package. What features are good or bad, and what should or shouldn't be included on the client side? My question to Slashdot readers is, what software and services should ISPs distribute and support?"
the answer is "only products that you have researched and are familiar with". That means that the software is well documented and that you have links to known bugs & other issues. It helps if you have an inside person in that company too. Keep a knowledge base for your employees to eliminate redundant wild goose chases.
On a side note, you must be pretty brave to be starting a business in a saturated market during an economic downturn. Know something we don't? Most ISPs have already been absorbed by the national chains (AOL, Yahoo, etc...). Good luck.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
How about distributing and supporting some kind of virus scanning/cleaning software. NAV or McAfee come to mind. Have the cost of an enterprise liscense added in to the cost of subscription or something. It would definitely help with Virus outbreaks.
Go ahead and mod me down for being a troll or offtopic, but take a look at the other posts here. They prove that the question was dumb to begin with.
To be more explicit, this question is unanswerable in its current form. More information is needed:
What user base are you going after? Linux users? Windows users? What OSes are you going to support? What does your technical support organization look like? Are you gunning for experienced surfers? Total newbies?
come with at least a browser of some sort, you should not distribute anything really.
Give the user the choice. Create a nice initial site that the new user connects to with links to common software. Also provide a page that gives detailed instructions on how to setup their email client, web browser, etc.
Be one of the few to promote user choice!
I work at a small isp that has not been absorbed by a monster yet, and we don't even distribute these disks. We use the microsoft dun, macos's dialer, or whatever for linux. We try to support anything you can bring at us, even stupid things like Microsoft word, or antivirus problems. The bad part about the disks, is that if you sign up over the phone, you have to wait for the disks, we just set them up over the phone.
It's not impossible to get good service from a small ISP, you just have to look.
:Peter
I've gotten CDs from various ISPs over the years. The only one I've ever kept (or even used) was one that had every single RFC ever written burned onto it. Massively helpful, instructive, and educational from a historical standpoint.
The less platforms you support, the lower your costs will be. When we opened up 4 years ago, we quickly found out that time for customer support was way beyond what we imagined.
So, in order to keep our rates low ($12.95/mo, less annually), we send a disc that automatically configures Win9x/Win2k/WinXP dial-up networking. It also reccomends installation of IE6 (included on disc). We only offer *software* tech support to customers running on that platform.
Of course, we still give out all information and do the best we can to get other systems up and running. Generally, if you include something on a CD, the customer expects support--that's why you should keep it minimal.
As far as VNC software goes, it's not worth the effort or security risk).
ISPs should be providing infrastructure. Leave the software to the users. Save money on providing and supporting software and spend it on paying those support people enough to actually know what they are doing when customers call because something isn't working.
If you really need to distribute software, then share those if/else click through support files that the tech support people are [poorly] using. Of course, I may just be bitter having used AOL's and Comcast's "support" services.
offer them everything net related. a bigass webpage with all the different categories of software and a simplified description of what that TYPE of software does.
let it be their choice- if there's licensing issues with software, include a link to where they can get it. Preferably free software- free as in beer. perhaps links to reviews of the software.
If you REALLY wanted to put work into it, offer a webpage where you can put in your computers stats(os, ram, hd, etc) and it can make suggestions on what they 'could' try. Keep in mind most people who would need something like this aren't going to that experienced in the first place.
Make sure everything is simple- I use the granny test when testing usability of software. I take a not-so-random sample of my granmothers, my girlfriend's grandmothers, and my friends grandmothers, and tell them to try the software- if they like it, I take careful notes on how THEY would describe it.
using this method, describe post a review of the software and let users share their comments.
make sure to tell the users that your not responsible for the software or the advice of others. which reminds me, include documentation- that way you can tell them to RTFM and they'll know where to find it.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
*snerk*
Bwahhahahaha...
Oh, man, you are so deluded.
Do you know where the people who really, *really* know how to do tech support go to?
The answer is: Ding! Anywhere but tech support. Because tech support work blows, period. It's like working the fry line at McDonalds - once you've grown beyond the ability to do fries, you do whatever it takes to get out of having to do it. Like programming, sysadmin, or even nothing to do with computers at all.
In other words, the people who would make fantastic tech support people get away from tech support, because those very skills lend themselves to (one hopes) better employment, better pay, and less shackling to a phone line talking to dips who think they know more than you. What do you end up with after they all go away? The dregs. Hence, your problem.
Besides, the average geek should be able to track down whatever knowledge he needs without having to ask some anonymous person on the phone.
Most tech support people I know started out as curious geeks, and only became tech support because they found a job where they could get paid for their obscure knowledge. I was one of those guys, and I will never, never, never do tech support again. Ditto for the fry line.
GMFTatsujin
I just want my ISP to provide a (reliable, fast) connection to the internet. End of story.
Fortunately that's what my ISP provides. (Oh, yeah, they offer an email account, but I prefer to run my own domain.)
Any software or service an ISP offers beyond that is costing somebody money. Guess who.
-- Alastair
Do make very clear your e-mail storage quota, and establish a mechanism for notifying them when they approach that quota (probably just an email message). If possible, have two quotas, one that's an absolute limit and one they get a few days warning on.
Sorry, I know this isn't really a software issue, but it can be a major pain to try and swap important files like PDF documents with people and all of a sudden you are not receiving the messages and, in many cases, the ISP is not even bothering to bounce them back at the sender. It's one of those detail issues you never think of when you start using an ISP (unless you're grizzled) but ends up becoming very important.
You must mean like this one. Selected quotes:
Okay imagine for one moment you had this as your job. Day in and day out people calling in talking about "yellow triangles" and "everytime you tell me to right click on the desktop nothing happens (come to find out they had a pen and were writing the word click on their desk)" every second for 8 hours a day. Then after 400 calls of a 75 year old man complaining "he is out of internet and needs refilled" you get someone with a flavor of Linux. Or a Mac of some sort. Add this to you only ever seeing a computer as something that has windows on it. Okay you can trouble shoot problems to a degree but with no formal training outside of learning how to use Yahoo Messenger before getting your job you sometimes overlook the obvious. Couple this with a two week paycheck that adds up to just enough to buy the latest version of Command and Conquer and you have my dilemma as a call center manager. Not everyone has played with any version of Linux ( although I have setup a redhat box as a learning station that usually draws blank stares ) or even seen a real live Mac. Sure you are going to run into that in tech support, AT ANY LEVEL, WITH ANY COMPANY. You are forgetting the fundemental idea here. Your example here is tainted as you probably had a better idea of what was going on then the support person you called into. A simple question of "is there anyone one there familier with Linux" would have probably got you a answer you desired. But to expect a ISP of any size to have a entire call center filled with people who can compile their own Kernal's and have a clue as to what the Chooser is is probably not in existance. But to have a call center with some people that are able to help customers that use an OS that is not bundled with there Dell is very very likely. It bothers me when I get a customer like the example you have described that instead of simply asking "okay is anyone there familier with -fill in the Linux version-" you automatically take aim and fire. The key to this whole rant is simple, it is you that called in for help in the first place. This does not excuse the fact that the customer support rep didn't ask any real questions besides blaming packet lose on IE, although if you did have IE it probably would be to blame. All I am asking is that you have a little patience with the person who picks up the phone next time, and you would be surprised to see you get a much higher level of satisfaction with that call.
I moved into a new apartment near the end of 2000. Broadband was not (affordably) available in my neighborhood, and so I opted for a dial-in through a company named MStar. Boy was that a mistake.
I was running Linux on my primary machine, but they sent me Windows-only sign-up software on a CD-ROM. So I fired up my old system from when I was a freshman, which still had Windows '95 on it, and signed up. Their software loaded onto my system, took the liberty of placing a custom "quick-launch" bar onto my desktop, and then proceeded to log me in and activate my account.
The browser on the quick-launch bar was IE, but I prefered Netscape. However, when I tried to launch Netscape, the window would blip open for a split second and then close. Confused, I closed the quick-launch program (which disconnected me from the network) and tried again; this time it worked. MStar's trojan sofware was literally blocking me from running Netscape.
Their software, which connecting, would ask for a username and password, which is just a front for a "real" username and password that were secretly passed to the server when initiating the PPP connection. I used some software to capture my real username and password, and then I set up a standard dial-up account. When I would try to access the net on my Linux box, the Windows box would be able to auto-dial the connection. That worked nicely for a while.
Until a month later when banner ads from MStar started appearing at the bottom of every page that I loaded. Their servers were modifying every web page that I retrieved by placing an image and a link to MStar-related sites! There was a "disable banner for 5 minutes" link in the banner, which simply called a Perl script with a parameter of 5.
Oh, and did I mention that MStar performs ISP-side web censorship? They blocked Adobe's web site once. I had to set up a proxy server on another network to get around that little issue.
With the help of a filtering proxy and a call to that script with a parameter of "9999999" in my browser's home page setting, I was finally able to get clean access to the net. A few months later, I moved and had broadband access. But I will never consider going with MStar again.
The next time I search for an ISP, I will only subscribe to a service that interferes the least with my connection to the Internet.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine