Are Internet Problems Holding Your Business Back?

Of all the technology problems that small and mid-sized businesses experience, poor internet must be among the most deeply felt. When the internet is down, there is no connection with cloud apps like Microsoft 365, no VoIP phones, and no email. Slow performance makes for a poor experience of online Teams meetings too and slows productivity to a snail’s pace. But is there a way to get better internet performance, without the budget of a massive corporation?

Internet dissatisfaction is commonplace among small to mid-sized businesses, but often the view is that it is all the same. It is easy to see why this perception persists. The price tends to be much the same between the providers, the specifications are similar, and there is little difference in reported uptime. You get the same service level agreements (SLAs), and whether you go with a large provider, or one of their smaller competitors, it is all connected to the same NBN… right?

If you keep doing the same thing, you’ll keep getting the same frustrating result. The difference comes when you get a service better designed for business. TechPath does this by consolidating providers, which gives far better control of internet quality. We choose to cross-connect with as many providers as possible, so that if one provider is slow for a specific task, or experiences downtime, our customers’ internet traffic automatically continues via another provider. We see it as a bet of all worlds approach that minimises latency, improves speed and maximises uptime.

Tired of Call Centres?

If you’ve ever spent an unfeasibly long time on the phone to an ISP call centre to try to resolve a problem – and who hasn’t? – you’ll know that there are other considerations when it comes to choosing a provider. Calls usually follow a familiar path. You dial the number, navigate the automated system and attempt to get to the right person. A few loops of hideous hold music later, you reach a human who insists on you repeating all the obvious steps that you already tried before embarking on this particular form of torture. It doesn’t help, cue more hold music. You may be passed along to an engineer, likely after more of the hold music, and before you know it, your entire afternoon has been spent dealing with your ISP, and you’ll hear their music in your sleep.

TechPath Does it Different

Initially, it is often the prospect of local, face-to-face support that prompts our internet customers to seek us out. That and an NPS score above 82 on customer satisfaction, more than double that of a typical ISP. We operate on the belief that if an issue can’t be quickly resolved on a phone call, your business needs help promptly, so instead of sending you on a call centre wild goose chase, we send out an engineer. With internet, you can be dealing with quite technical challenges, and that requires real expertise.

Those initial challenges often begin before installation. One of our clients is a farm business, and they were some distance from the exchange. They had received quotes of tens of thousands of dollars just to dig trenches. Taking an individual approach, our engineer soon realised that the client had the capability and equipment to dig the trenches they needed on their property, saving massively and bringing the cost within reach. Our engineer project managed everything, but our clients rolled up their sleeves and saved themselves a lot of money. That consultative approach may not be feasible or desirable within the major provider consumer model, but it is absolutely needed by SMBs whose income depends on consistently reliable internet.

Of course, if you’re a school, or a retailer, or an aged care provider, you may not want to be digging trenches, and we can arrange that for you. From the start, we establish your business needs in terms of internet speed and quality, learn about how you use your service. We work from there to provision the right internet combination, reconfigure your IT environment where needed, and provide ongoing support when your business grows, moves location, or changes. No call centre queues, no scripts, and no hesitation in helping our customers to get the right outcome.

There can be little difference in cost between internet providers, but there is certainly a difference in outcome. Don’t want to spend another afternoon navigating a call centre for limited return? Give TechPath’s skilled, local experts a call instead.