Internet Service Provider Data Collection example essay topic

As an Internet service provider, my primary task should be to provide the fastest and most reliable service to my customers. In this day and age, Internet service providers come a dime a dozen. They vary from telephone modem carriers such as Earthlink and Netzero to the faster service providers such as Time Warner's Roadrunner and Cox Cables' high speed Cox service. With so many providers out there, the competition is fierce.

But, as a business owner, my job is to get as many clients as possible, which means either signing up a new Internet user or getting an existing Internet user to switch over their service to my organization. But, how does one go about doing this? The first step is to estimate the number of people in your service area with Internet connections in their households. This is done through proper data collection.

Data collection can be done through any number of ways. But, in the collection method, one needs to keep the costs down, get the information in a speedy manner, and verify that the data collected is reliable. For something like Internet service verification, one good means of data collection would be to conduct a telephone survey over a two to three week time period. The initial cost for this type of data collection would be very minimal. To begin, you would need the proper facility in which to house five to six phones.

As an Internet Service Providers, having access to extra phone lines should not be difficult at all. One could plan on hiring a temporary phone marketing survey team by placing an advertisement in the local newspaper. The cost for the ad would be around $250.00 for the three week time period. The staff could be paid minimum wage, which is $6.50 per hour in California. With between five and six telephone operators, working five hours a day for three 5-day work weeks, the labor costs would run between $2438.00 and $2925.00. Again, this is a high number.

One could always cut back on the amount of phone operators working or the time it takes to conduct the phone survey. This means of data collection is reliable and does not require a lot of extra labor hours or resources to be completed. The two to three week time span in which it takes to complete the survey is really quite a fast turn-around. But, a telephone survey is not the only route in which one could take with an Internet Service Provider data collection. Using the old door-to-door method is also a viable way to collect information. But, the only problem with this is the amount of manpower needed to do so.

First, we would need to place an ad in the local newspaper as we did with the phone marketing campaign. An average sized ad is going to cost roughly $250.00 for a two-three week period. From this ad we would hope to capture at least 5 good candidates. After this process has been completed, we send the "troops" out to comb the neighborhoods at least 8 hours a day for three weeks.

Now, unfortunately, our labor costs will be much higher with an increase of up to three more hours of payroll each day. These extra payroll costs are unavoidable, as we will need more time to cover the same amount of ground as our staff is now on foot as opposed to using the phone. Total labor costs at the end of the three weeks will run as high as $4050.00 which is quite a bit more then our budgeted $2925.00 for the phone marketing expenses. Now, we should also factor in that on a door-to-door basis, there will be many people who would be less apt to talk to our staff in person then over the phone. This will also get us less actual responses.

When all is said and done, let us compare the results. With a phone survey, we were able to keep our overhead down and the speed of the data collection was extremely efficient compared to the old door-to-door methods of collection. The reliability of the phone surveys and the door-to-door surveys were pretty much the same. Although, by keeping our staff in doors to conduct surveys over the phone, we were able to keep them fresh and alert. This created an overall better voice appeal to the individuals that we were surveying and we were able to get a much better response from the households. For this situation, the data collection method most appropriate for this situation was the telephone survey.

It was the most reliable, the fastest, and most cost effective way to conduct our data research.