Not only is it important for a provider to 
communicate with a customer frequently, it may
be just as important for the customer to communicate with the provider.
Case in point #1. When a customer signed the original service agreement, they had five employees, their VoIP phones and their desk PC’s. About a year later, their Internet began to go down every morning at 8:15. Upon further investigation from our Internet Service Report, we discovered that the customer now had 22 employees, their 22 VoIP phones, 22 desk top PC’s, and some had additional laptops and other devices accessing the bandwidth. No wonder they’re Internet was spotty. They over-utilized the available service.
The customer could have avoided their daily office wide frustration if they had communicated their growth plans with their provider in advance. We are eager to guided customers properly through the process of expanding their infrastructure efficiently and economically, by identifying potential obstacles and providing viable solutions. We do our very best to educate our customers and others about our industry with monthly letters, blogs, invoice announcements, invoice inserts, emails, phone calls etc. Sometimes the customer has to do their part as well.
Even if you are not sure that an internal change will affect your system, share your plan with them anyway to avoid any possible frustration or problem later. Your provider should be more than happy to provide insight that could make the project more efficient.
Please share your experience and ideas for educating your customers about the importance of communicating with you. Or share an experience of when the communication between customers and provider served to avoid disaster.