The following services will be added effective April 1, 1999. Changes will be made on the web pages of Services and Support and in the Billing Policy of Registration for new accounts. We will send out a message to all users, place an article and a paid ad in the Taos News, and post in the lobby area.Listserves: La Plaza has been managing listserves since the beginning of service. We have had several requests to create new lists and to make changes to existing lists. As it is time consuming for LP staff to create and maintain the lists, we will now require a member of the listserve for management. A curriculum for listserve management has been developed and will begin being offered April 1, 1999.
Listserves:Web Support: La Plaza has provided incalculable web site technical support to private web designers. These designers are charging large hourly rates and do not have the html knowledge and skills to develop the web site. La Plaza will provide technical assistance to these web designers but prior to the service a signed contract will be required.
$50.00 for class and setup fee
$25.00 for class for existing listserve
$10.00 monthly chargesWeb Site Support:There are many users who do not pay their email account charges and after 50 days their account is deactivated. In order to activate the account they must pay the past due charges and the $5.00 setup fee for a new account. To encourage users to pay their bills on a timely basis a reactivation fee is being required when accounts are closed due to a past due account. Also, if users want to retrieve their email and/or personal files there is a fee for service.
$50.00 an hour for technical supportBillingDedicated Service: Several users are requesting a dedicated phone line for their Internet connection. We have discussed with Integrity Networking the best possible solution for this type of service. Integrity is recommending an Omni Directional Antenna system which eliminates modems, routers, IP addresses, ( a large amount of equipment that would be housed in the La Plaza Smart Room). I will bring to the Board meeting, a proposal from Integrity Networking for wireless dedicated service. The costs will be presented at that time also.
Reactivation fee - $25.00
Recovered email or Personal files - $25.00Additional Modems for Taos: we are getting costs to add 10 digital modems to the La Plaza modem bank. These costs are not included in the approved 1999 Budget; however, as the number of users increase, additional modems are required to provide efficient, accessible Internet access. The costs have not been received at the time of this report.
There have been a minute number of complaints regarding customer service at the Help Desk. Some of these complaints have been specific to technical support, the staff persons' attitude, the staff persons' personality, etc. I have discussed with the staff the need for quality customer service and we all agree to that point. I will be scheduling a customer service workshop for all staff and volunteers to attend. We want La Plaza users to receive answers to their questions and concerns and we feel that a workshop will give us new ideas for customer service.
Location | # users | # hours | average |
---|---|---|---|
La Plaza (Taos) | 1021 | 1212.32 | 1.19 |
Penasco | 337 | 345.15 | 1.02 |
Questa | 293 | 180.36 | .37 |
San Cristobal | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Class | # of Classes | # of Participants |
Public Orientation | 3 | 26 |
Intro to Email | 4 | 25 |
Intro to WWW | 3 | 16 |
Easy Web Page Design | 1 | 2 |
HTML | 1 | 6 |
Marketing Your Web Page | 0 | 0 |
Total | 12 | 75 |
New Primary Accounts | 109 |
New Secondary Accounts | 22 |
Reactivated Accounts | 15 |
Total | 146 |
Past due balances of >51 days | 35
(119 notices sent) |
Per User Request | 34
(7 moving) (5 not using) (6 poor svc/unable to access) (4 no reason given) (3 switch to other provider) (5 computer not working) (2 seasonal use only) (2 secondary) |
Total | 69 |
Tech Support Calls | 112 |
Billing | 56 |
New Accounts | 44 |
Hours | 30 |
Classes | 28 |
Web Site | 13 |
Questa | 87 |
Penasco | 22 |
Other | 229 |
Total | 621 |
The total number of calls in February appeared to have decreased by half. It appears that user calls regarding inability to connect due to problems on the LP side have decreased. New registrants using Windows 98 platform no
longer seem to be calling with the error 650 problems. Could it be that the problems experienced in January were caused by the problems we were having with the modem bank?
Location | #Users | #Dial-in | Connect Time (hrs) |
---|---|---|---|
Taos | 1520 | 102809 | 45822.41 |
Penasco | 75 | 3271 | 3033.07 |
Questa | 101 | 2101 | 3059.38 |
Total | 2063 | 1660
(80% of total users) |
44236.8 |
Judith Pepper, Executive Director, La Plaza Telecommunity