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While there may be economic storm clouds ahead, business telecoms continue to remain a growth sector for nimble, customer-focused Managed Service Provers (MSPs) and wholesale resellers. In turbulent times customers demand choice and value. How are you stacking up?
In a downturn Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) continue to seek cheaper alternatives in the wake of economic uncertainty. This often leads to cancelling contracts in an environment that provides fierce competition. However, companies that listen to their customer concerns, address them and add value are up to ‘48% more likely to retain them’ according to studies by McKinsey, with ‘the estimated cost of acquiring a new customer [being] 5x higher than retaining an existing one.’
A proven strategy to better understand your customers’ needs is offering a complimentary audit of their existing services. In looking for ways to reduce customer costs across infrastructure, security, hosting, or management you unlock new opportunities, including the adoption of emerging tools or services.
Customers rely on your expertise to bring their ideas to life; add value and you will be well on your way to building lifelong relationships.
In an on-demand world there is an expectation that telco service providers are responsive and flexible, commissioning, and decommissioning services as needed.
In times of economic uncertainty, customers want to be able to quickly adjust their contracts to best suit their needs, which often increases demand on back-office tasks, creating headaches for service management and billing.
Software automation allows you to ‘work smarter not harder’, scaling up capabilities, without scaling costs.
We know running a telco is complicated enough without also having manage telecom billing, provisioning, and customer service. Thankfully with Telcoinabox, you don’t have to.
Octane, our proprietary customer service, ordering, and telecom billing platform makes telecom provisioning simple. Octane is fully integrated with our voice, mobile, nbnTM and fibre services to ensure fast and accurate customer billing and order processing.
So you can spend more time on customer service and less time on building cumbersome processes that take you further away from providing the on-demand service your customers expect.
Cash flow is the lifeblood of your business, especially in uncertain times.
To ensure you’re paid quickly, and keep on top of bad and doubtful debts, your telecom billing system needs to be tried and true.
Unfortunately, many small telecom providers rely on manual processes for CDR reconciliation and customer billing: adding hours of repetitive work that is prone to human error.
A managed billing service means that monthly invoicing and payment collections are done-for-you. For example, Telcoinabox handles hundreds of payment cycle runs per month for service providers, delivering accurate white label invoices to tens of thousands of end customers.
In fact, our team of analysts and developers are constantly working to improve billing accuracy and usability – each and every billing cycle.
Plus, our Octane service management portal also supports DIY telecom billing, including the ability to:
That’s the sort of billing system your business needs: one free of headaches and human error!
In uncertain economic times, multi-service bundling is particularly important for both winning new customers and retaining existing ones.
Small businesses customers increasingly expect a “complete” product suite from their IT or Managed Service Provider. And if you’re not offering a comprehensive stable of communication services, chances are – your competitors will.
Below are a few products and services you should consider adding to complement and expand your current IT service suite.
Many Australian businesses are ditching redundant office phone systems for modern cloud-based services, powered by nbnTM and mobile broadband.
Business voice services, such as Cloud PBX or SIP Trunking remain low-hanging fruit for many MSPs. These voice services typically deliver much higher margin, plus additional revenue from IP handsets and add-on services like 1300 / 1800 numbers and eFax services.
The challenge for many IT providers is understanding how they can enter this lucrative market.
While most phone systems require deep telecom expertise, ConnectYou is easy to setup, configure and manage – from anywhere – with no technical background required.
The ConnectYou management portal provides provisioning, competitive wholesale pricing and a comprehensive feature set, all in one place.
The no-code portal makes it easy to setup custom call flows, configure PBX features and assign user handsets and softphones.
Every business needs fast and reliable internet. Why not provide this service too?
Telcoinabox is a one-stop shop for business data services, including: business nbnTM, high speed fibre & ethernet and wholesale mobile SIM (MVNO) services. Our plans and inclusions are designed with SMB service providers in mind, including pre-configured modems and seamless drop-shipping of IP phone handsets and mobile SIMs.
Business Mobile and Data services are a great option to bundle with our white label Cloud PBX and other SIP Trunking services. Enabling you to provide a complete communications solution for your existing customers, and a competitive advantage for new customers.
With more than 40% of Australian’s currently working from home, it’s little wonder that SMBs are seeking providers to help them deliver Unified Communications tools to empower hybrid and remote collaboration.
Microsoft Teams continues to grow as the de facto communication tool across SMBs, and Teams-based calling is quickly replacing enterprise phone services.
For MSPs, this is both an opportunity and challenge. The opportunity is clear: a greenfield market of millions of businesses. The challenge is how to quickly and efficiently roll-out Direct Routing and support new ways of working in Teams.
The caveat for MSPs is that enabling Teams calling (Direct Routing) typically means spending hours in manual configuration, or hiring a costly Microsoft expert to implement, requiring dedicated and costly resources.
Of course, Telcoinabox has a solution for this too.
Unite Calling is an integrated solution for deploying, managing, and billing Teams Calling that is purpose-built for MSPs, IT and telecom providers.
It is a fully automated, no-code, cloud-based service that allows any Microsoft Partner to quickly enable Direct Routing (PSTN calling) for Teams, allowing you to get up and running in minutes. You don’t need to worry about configuring SBCs, SIP Trunks or carrier interconnects. With Telcoinabox, the entire communications backbone is managed for you.
One of the simplest, most lucrative telecom services that MSPs can provide is inbound numbering. In Australia these are 13, 1300 and 1800 phone numbers. Typically used by small business and enterprise for customer service and sales lines.
Inbound numbers are a simple add-on to any cloud PBX, Teams calling or UCaaS service. Plus, with our market-leading Number Manager portal, you can provide high-value inbound call features over the top of any inbound service. This includes:
Any inbound numbers that you order and port through Telcoinabox can be displayed and managed in Number Manager, giving you granular control over how and where calls come into their business.
When facing the storms of economic uncertainty, resilient companies take a proactive approach and there are specific steps you can take to protect your IT or MSP business. This includes: understanding customer needs; automating back-office ‘busywork’; increasing your cashflow with streamlined billing; and diversifying your product suite with high value communication services. ,
By protecting recurring revenue, and focusing on service delivery and cost reductions, you can build a more ‘recession-proof’ business. In turn, enabling you to ramp up investment or M&A in the recovery phase of the economy.
Speak to one of our sales team today to see how Telcoinabox can support you with some of these initiatives.
