The DSL Installer Will Be There

Aelera's Customer Relationship Management software for DSL installs could solve the DSL industry's biggest problem—the long wait for installation—by efficiently allocating qualified installers.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [August 17, 2000]

Georgia-based Aelera has an answer to the inefficiencies of DSL installation.

This is big
The biggest problem in DSL service is that DSL installers simply fail to show up for their appointments.

On a page called "DSL Install Hell," one customer relates (and this is just part of the rant):

 

		Hours On Hold
JUL 5	I order DSL. Install is scheduled for July 28. I've heard about the long lead-time, so two or three weeks sounds okay.
JUL 27	A couple days before the scheduled install, I discover that I haven't been receiving phone calls for quite some time. I find out that my phone has been switched from one number to another completely different number; I can dial out with no problem, but since I'm on someone else's number, no one can reach me.	two hours
JUL 28	The Day! I wait all day, but the PacBell tech never shows.
JUL 29	Reschedule DSL tech for after my vacation, on August 18.	one and a half hours
AUG 18	DSL tech doesn't show. Reschedule for the 21st. They put my order on "expedite" or something.	three hours
AUG 21	The DSL tech shows. He spends two hours trying to get sync. He's on the phone for a long time (on hold, ironically enough, with the same people I was on hold for). Finally I realize that he's trying to get sync on the side of the wire that goes to my apartment, not the one to the central office. After I tell him this, things go pretty smoothly. Seconds after sticking the IP number into my NT box, I'm on the Internet. Yay.

Many more testimonials are available at DSL Reports.

All too often, we see ISPs supplying the Internet without realizing the efficiencies of the revolutionary product they supply.

Connecting the customer to the installer
Aelera's idea is easily explained, more difficult to build and implement. An install team should have access to the home database while in the field, and customers should be able to submit requests direcly to the same database. Customers, managers, and install techs all require different interfaces, but all should deal with the same data.

When a customer places a request for DSL service in the Aelera-supplied database, the software will use the customer's phone number to determine available local install techs. It will contact the techs, plan the route, and notify the customer. It can even make sure that any Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) is delivered to the installer. When the install is finished, it will record any notes about the installation using voice-to-text technology. The tech can therefore enter notes into the database by talking through a cellular phone.

How it works
The business of Aelera, the company, is about customizing and integrating online databases. Dustin Crane, the President and Founder, has 17 years of experience designing and launching complex database applications for clients as diverse as Mrs. Field's Cookies and the Utah Department of Transportation.

The Aelera idea is a problem-tracking or order-tracking database that both customers and companies can access. With everyone looking at the same order data, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) should be easier, and customer acquisition should also be easier.

But DSL installation is a special case.

Speeding up DSL installs required additional modules for Aelera's CRM software. The ISP angle appears to come in part from the Director of Sales and Marketing, Jim Nolte, who has 15 years of experience in senior sales and marketing positions within the telecommunications industry. But Aelera is used to customizing its software for large clients, in a process that involves business consulting.

Said Dustin Crane, "When we go into a business, we're like the military. We assess the objective, look at the terrain, and figure out how to accomplish our objective as efficiently as possible." This means everything from rewriting code and GUIs so the software will work with legacy hardware, to streamlining business processes in ways the client approves but does not always anticipate, to implementing a CRM solution in weeks instead of months.

So Aelera contacted installers, many of them very small outfits, and built a database of names and addresses. The database may not be complete, but since Aelera essentially supplies business leads for free, the incentive to be listed in Aelera's database is clear.

Aelera does not have a direct relationship with the installers outside of their using the application for business leads. Some installers have not put their equipment list into Aelera's database. If a company has not supplied a list of equipment, the database will not be able to order equipment for a specific scheduled install.

The installers can prioritize a favored client, such as EarthLink, and ISPs can prioritize favored installers, or list their in-house resources in their own database and make three levels of priority: 1) in-house installers should always be working 2) then favored, known, skilled companies should be employed and 3) if demand is especially high, the ISP can send business to other companies.

The CRM technology
At the center of all of this is three types of interaction with the database:

1. Call center
2. Web-based
3. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Customers can call in and place orders, but they are also able to place orders online or through an IVR phone-menu.

Similarly, techs can call the ISP, but they can also call an IVR system, and after typing in the order number on their cell phone, leave a voice message (such as, "install took six hours because customer's computer lacked X"). The voice message is translated to text and entered automatically into the database.

Jim Nolte told us that an order-tracking IVR feature for customers would be easy to implement, but he has not yet been asked for one.

Pricing
Aelera is trying to reach smaller clients. It has already sold the service to the RBOCs; it wants to reach the small ISPs. This means a new pricing system. Aelera is adopting a pay-per-transaction pricing system. Aelera will require a base fee in addition to a transaction fee. Although there are flaws in other pay-per-use models, there appear to be none in Aelera's pricing system. Since each transaction on Aelera's software represents a new customer, there should be no problems in assessing the value of Aelera's contribution.

—End