Resource CD for your customers

Do any of you supply your customer with a resource CD to help minimize basic tech support?

I figure I can get away under $1 per CD and it could save ton of over the phone time.

any ideas or suggestions?

We provide a cd when installation is done. This CD contains an autorun that opens a page with whatever service they choose (we have phone,DSL,wireless, etc). Once they choose that, there are dialer makers (we use pppoe) and support documents (checklists and such) and useful programs/instructions they can brows and use for troubleshooting. Note, however, we still have the calls comeing in with disabled nics as the reason for no connectivity and that is one of the first checks on the documentation :? . The CD may help some people and it definately looks professional, but most probably don’t take the time to look at it or just want the comfort of personal support. *Now for dialup setups it was SUPER! but that day is ending.

:wink:

do you have the cd on the web? Im looking for some ideas on improving what i currently have.

right now its an auto run CD that runs a local html page that covers,

paying your bill
trouble shooting your connection
trouble shooting your email
recommended utilities
computer repair
home network solutions

at this time, the image is not available online, though I am looking to set that feature up. My co-worker that makes it for us uses some flash and stuff for the CD, However, online does have a website that provides various support information as pages and in adobe format.

It looks to me that the topic you cover are definately the important ones. It is similar to ours, though the front page has a list of all our services or general information, then a list of either installation or support. The installation is for installing dialers or settings for their connection type along with a gui for them entering their information and username/pass. It also gives them the option to set up their email in outlook, where it will make the nessesary changes to enable outlook to use the correct servers and username/pass. The support has what you have listed. with a wealth of information on each topic.

I had thought about moving a step further…we have dial-up CDs for customers, but none for the wireless.

I had previously dreamed up an idea to use XUL front-end, have an auto-run CD that installs XULRunner then have XUL do the GUI front-end. I’ve had extensive playtime with XUL and I really like it. It would feature on-line bill pay, plan selections (upgrade/downgrade), managing the canopy SM (setting Port Mapping on 8.2 software via SNMP requests, setting filtering), account management (email addition, password changes), tools to help diagnose connection issues, a sort of tech support agent that could report vital information back to our office via an email or other non-critical method of transport that would help tech agents troubleshoot easier…etc, etc…

Haven’t pursued it too much further as I’m still thinking about it.

Regardless, CD + Welcome kit could make your company stand out above the rest IMHO. Personalization =)

LP wrote:
It also gives them the option to set up their email in outlook, where it will make the nessesary changes to enable outlook to use the correct servers and username/pass.


That is a pain in the ***. Ugh. The nightmares. (in native C)

That is a step further… I would say that’s a jump further. That would be quite nice indeed to have all those features on the CD. good… thinking rjk. You’ll have to let me/the forum know how that goes if it does.