We often battle to get customers to do anything themselves. Of course one of the reasons for choosing FSPBX was an easy to understand customer interface. But we are finding so much resistance. "I don't have time to read a manual - just tell me what to do, or do it for me" is the refrain. There are those who take to it like a fish to water but the vast majority just refuse to. Is this something unique to our environment or do others battle with the same thing? Just out of interest.
How do others get customers to actually read the manual or do anything themselves
- Thread starter Voipy
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We staff a great support team and then charge change orders back to the customers. Basically we provide that service and our customer pays for it.
We have played with the idea (and tested) of charging for this but have found it's the quickest way of losing a customer- they simply won't pay for it or pack up and go. It really should be charged for, I agree and maybe we will just build it into the price of the PBX but that's not easily done with existing ones.
Before FS PBX, self-management was not a thing. FusionPBX was not built with that in mind. Clients that we onboarded back then still call us for the smallest things. We learned that if we can have a remote session with them, we can make the adjustments right in front of them, and they get to learn how to do it. It's not perfect, and it doesn't work with every client, but some do eventually start using the portal. All new clients are much easier. We show them our portal on day 1, and they know to go there. Another solution that has worked for us was this. If the ticket comes in via email, we send detailed screenshots with step-by-step instructions so they can do it themselves. This isn't always perfect either, and both solutions take a lot longer from our standpoint, but it does help long-term if they learn.
I mean the moat for this industry is basically just being bothered to learn a little bit about SIP, and being willing to understand the esoteric nature of SIP endpoints. I don't think you will really find a golden customer who is willing to pay you, but do all the support themselves. Anyone with a little bit of a can-do attitude would just spin up their own 3CX, FSPBX, FusionPBX. As an aside, in Britain, it already looks like the entire PSTN is on a terminal decline anyway, with customers instead opting to just transition to using Teams/Slack/etc and just having a Whatsapp integration for customers; so the customers that we have left are basically traditional businesses who just don't want to mess with anything until their eventual retirement.
This is truth. And AI has lowered the bar to entry even further. Anyone moderately technical with a little time on their hands can easily spin up their own PBX and save tons of money. Most people don’t want to do anything they don’t have to and will just move to another company if they are asked to help manage their system.
There’s also a flip side to this whole question. I actually try to keep customers out of the portal. I don’t want an inept customer making changes that they don’t fully understand and breaking things that will just require a whole lot more of my time to fix. I try to keep them out of the portal as much as possible. We price high enough that we can nake all changes asked of us. Typically after a new customer settles down into their initial configuration, we only get rare calls to change anything and any changes we are called to make are usually fast and minor.
I agree with doing it ourselves to a large extent to avoid silly mistakes such as call forwarding loops. And indeed, once the initial setup is done, not much happens anymore. BUT - and this is the killer for us - Business hours should be done by customers. When a public holiday comes up, invariably 600 customers send us a mail to please "send calls to an out of office message, send them to a cell phone, etc" - and many of those mails arrive 2 minutes before we knock off the day before. Those are the only ones I really wish users would just do themselves, but alas, we end up doing it for most.
Thanks for the input guys and girls!
Thanks for the input guys and girls!
Turn a crisis into an opportunity, I'd say. Send out email shots to customers a week or two before a public holiday asking them to get in contact to prepare for the holiday, you might even be able to upsell some other services on top of this call to action too, suggest a manual holiday override call flow that you can configure for them perhaps.
We typically do this for Easter, as there's no easy way apply a Time Condition for it, so it always gets forgotten.
We typically do this for Easter, as there's no easy way apply a Time Condition for it, so it always gets forgotten.
Good call - and we actually used to do that - but typically customers don't read their emails either 
and we stopped this. Maybe we just have very difficult and lazy ones. You reminded me of this though now and what would actually work better is to extract the email addresses of those who are set up to manage their PBX and send it to them instead. The "general contact" we have listed at a company is not usually that. I will make a note to do this rather than create a separate list and see if we get better results there.
and we stopped this. Maybe we just have very difficult and lazy ones. You reminded me of this though now and what would actually work better is to extract the email addresses of those who are set up to manage their PBX and send it to them instead. The "general contact" we have listed at a company is not usually that. I will make a note to do this rather than create a separate list and see if we get better results there.Unless I’m misunderstanding, There are a few ways this could be handled without portal access. The easiest way is what we do. We just give all customers who want it access to a soft phone. Ringotel works well or whatever you want. Their extension then rings on their cell phone even when away from the office. You could also program a key on their desk phone to allow them to forward calls wherever they want. Maybe they would want a standing find me follow me rule. Or show them how to use the default FusionPBX feature codes for call forwarding: *72 to enable, *73 to disable and *74 to toggle the setting on or off. But a key on the desk phone is better. Forwarding calls in my mind isn’t something that needs the portal. Portal is a high effort clunky way to get it done.
Yes - for some we do exactly that but for many others that won't work because of different requirements. Each customer is different of course and we try and keep it as simple as possible. We have some who use the feature codes, but call forwarding is seldom done on an extension level for most of our clients. Anyway, many ways to skin a cat and we will keep looking for the easiest way. The thread was started out of frustration a bit because we show people who to do things in 2 steps, and then they still won't do it and bug us on the public holiday, when we are also off 