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11/27/2005: "further words on the crisis at Wayport"

Someone (who wishes to remain anonymous) wrote in with some clarification on the issues at the Sonesta:
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The background on the Sonesta issue...

I was at Wayport at the time that they "decided to stop servicing that location."

Wayports "decision to stop servicing" was aided in no small part by the sonesta physically tearing out every last piece of Wayport equipment and throwing it into a pile behind the building after reaching the last straw due to shitty tech-support that had been outsourced to a bunch of monkeys in Salt Lake City. Company by the name of Sento. These people were something else. I am pretty sure I even have a phone call or two recorded at home showing their brilliance at fixing an issue.

Anyway, the support became so horrendous, the Austin callcenter finally got a call and it was the manager of the Sonesta basically saying "We are finished with Wayport. If you want your shit, it is piled up out back. Otherwise, go to hell."

Solid business model. ;-)

They almost lost the Four Seasons contract for the EXACT same reason. Took some heavy duty meetings to rescue that contract even.

But who needs to pay attention to business travellers? Apparently the real money in wi-fi is at mcdonals. LOL

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Now, a couple of things:

First, I really appreciate this kind of "insider" information from inside the company, even if you don't work there any more. Vucina is supposed to send all shareholders an annual "letter", reviewing the status of the company, but either I or Brett have had to remind him on several occasions that he's tardy. This further re-enforces the creepy "feeling" that I'd heard from someone (who I won't name) that Wayport had been "kicked out" of the Sonesta and nearly lost the Four Seasons account. Oddly, the Royal Sonesta still claims Wayport is providing service.

It also explains the discrepency between the two "halves" of the list of Wayport-served locations (though it says something even louder about whomever is writing the applications that extract this data.) Get to work, Keeler.

Third, the call center was always one of Wayport's "core competencies" at Wayport, at least while I was there. (I ran it at various times, as did Bill Hallett, who works for us at Netgate.) Rule one is that you don't outsource the things that make you unique, the places where you can "touch" the customer. At Wayport, the *only* time we dealt with the end-customer was when they had trouble, and we went out of our way to ensure that we could diagnose and fix the problem in a timely and curteous manner.

Fourth, Phil Windley is on the board at Sento. I know of, and respect Dr. Windley. Doc knows him real well. Interestingly, Phil mentions Wayport and Sento within a week of each other back in April 2004 on his blog, but doesn't link the two companies. This may be due to his presence on the Sento board (Sento is a public company), and Phil is just being careful. It may also indicate that the relationship between the two companies was over by April of 2004, or at least badly damaged.

Finally, I can't tell if Sento is still the outsourced call center for Wayport or not. I find a couple references to people who claim to work for Sento doing tech support for Wayport, but the pages seem stale.

Sento (or their PR agency) used to claim Wayport as a referenceable customer, but Wayport doesn't currently appear on Senao's list of clients.

In Japan, a sento is a traditional public bath house. A place for taking a bath. Someone took a bath, thats for sure.