Your Service Partner

Today’s service industry is changing a great deal. Not long ago the standard business model involved manufacturers providing their own service. “We service what we sell” was a common motto. Nationwide service organizations are extremely expensive to operate, and over the past 10 years, with seriously shrinking margins and prices, most manufacturers have not been able to support their service departments from their own product revenues.  The first step taken to overcome this issue involved manufacturers’ service departments branching into multi-vendor support. The second step involved outsourcing certain sectors of their service.

Eventually, however, most service departments were sold off, went out of business, or were integrated into another service company that was involved in multi-vendor support. Today, a great deal of the service work done involves a business model that depends on the engagement of sub-contractors doing the remote onsite technician work. This model greatly increases a service company’s access to a wide spectrum of talent and resources. In addition, the geography that can be covered and the flexibility of services, terms, and conditions that can be provided increase significantly as well.

NAP’s service model is also based on the use of nationwide partners and subcontractors. We use multiple databases of technical resources, including one primary “broker” of independent service technicians. The model is widely accepted in the market place and is expected to grow across all markets, including home repairs and consumer based services, and not just the IT community.

Though this is an effective and efficient model, our experience indicates that even a successful service model with a consistent quality of service cannot be sustained over time if the model involves two defects:

• Over dependence upon a remote technician’s skill set (if independent contractors used)
• Communication separation of remote tech from primary call coordinator

In order to avoid these problems, Network Access Products insists upon a direct relationship with the remote technician rather than communicating through a third-call center.

We also engage a Sr. Tech Support person on every call to walk the remote technicians through their tasks. Most remote technicians we work with are quite adept, and NAP maintains records on their performance in order to make decisions based on their specific capabilities and qualifications.  We have also developed a series of cellular access devices that allow a remote tech to provide NAP's tech support access to the network device.  Even if a dial phone line is not available, NAP can get into most remote network devices by using these cellular access devices.

When a service contract is set up, NAP must coordinate the geographic requirements with three specific needs: putting a remote tech on retainer, distributing test equipment to the area, and providing suitable spares for the contract.

We track the deployment of issued spares by model, revision, and serial number. Once into our system, we also track the history of each spare.

Our customer service record has proven that we can dispatch technicians for almost any purpose nationwide faster than many other organizations.  This is because service calls are coordinated through our call-center, and the remote technician is always immediately in touch with our field support. It is our experience that the remote tech needs to be directly involved with our organization to prevent confusion. There is no “tiered” approach: a subcontracted tech will never work with his/her own dispatcher and therefore be at least one party removed. During the past year, customers have recognized that our call acknowledgement and dispatch are very fast, and our on-site response time, especially in distant remote places, is much faster than they anticipated.

Services Summary:

• Consulting and Design
  • Performance Evaluation
  • Network & Security Audits
• Project Management
• Product Procurement
  • New
  • Used
• Staging
  • Set up and Configuration
  • Design and development of Deployment Kits for large projects
• Cabling and Wiring
  • Demarc Extensions
  • Inside Wiring for LANs and Voice Stations
• Onsite Installation
• Network Monitoring
• Maintenance Support Solutions
  • Contracts: 7x24, 8x5 or custom
  • Time and Materials
  • Phone support
• Spares Management
  • Provisioning
  • Deployment to remote depots
  • Repair for customers who have their own spares
• Carrier Services
• AT&T design, procurement, and project management