One company wants to deliver constantly updatable support direct to users' desktops.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 26, 2007]

Lafayette, Colo.-based Peak8 Solutions visited our offices just a few days after we'd posted a note on the ISP-Planet—Access blog saying that customer service could be better. The entry, Please Fix Customer Service—You Have The Technology! contained some simple suggestions for improving customer service.

Peak8 had more. The company described to us a service system.

The system uses a client, size less than 3 MB, that is flash-based but browser-independent. "Sometimes we need to fix a sick browser," says Ronald A. Renjilian, president and CEO.

It is designed to be PC health dashboard. The system was the brainchild of John W. Fisher, the company's brilliant person. Fisher's goals include professional development and becoming a history teacher or evangelical pastor. At ISP-Planet, we believe that people need to be motivated by more than money.

What it does
The company collects solutions to problems that its call center experts have solved, cleans up the solutions, and provides them to the user. Peak8 writes up the solutions so that all content is no more than three lines of text per image. Those solutions are delivered to the PCs of users to whom it is relevant, where the data becomes a disk resident library (if the internet's down, you cannot connect to download a solution).

Peak8 touts research from Parks Associates showing that ISP users tend to solve problems themselves and would like a "health dashboard" to tell them when there are problems. Parks Associates found that 36 percent of users are willing to pay for unlimited technical support, which is what Peak8 claims to deliver.

"It's a virtual Geek Squad," says Renjilian. "Except that instead of charging $200+ per incident we are charging either $30 per incident or $10 per month for unlimited number of incidents." That's the price of Verizon's new premium tech support (except that as far as we know, Verizon's charging for what used to be free, whereas a local ISP that added Peak8 would be charging for a new service).

It also saves the ISP time. Renjilian says that the typical tech support call involves a series of questions that could take 18 minutes and often involves the "I didn't touch my machine" claim. Once it's done, you cannot be certain that you received correct answers. That call costs the ISP, Renjilian says, about 81 cents per minute.

"These questions upset the customer. They don't want to look foolish."

Instead, a solution that helps the customer solve the problem makes the customer feel good and saves the ISP money. "Small ISPs are patriotic," says Renjilian. "They hate offshoring. Our solution allows them to keep labor at home and take out 60 to 70 percent of the cost."

Being trusted
Peak8 aims to help ISPs do more than solve tech support problems, however. The company aims to help ISPs become a trusted advisor, recommending software products to customers. The software would range from anti-spyware to online storage.

The company is already providing online photo sharing, blog, and articles. With FreeConference, it offers free conference calls.

Pricing and availability
The solution is available now with no up front cost. ISPs are given a share of the revenue that Peak8 generates from their subscribers.

Interested readers should contact Peak8 for a demo.

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