SERVICE AND
SUPPORT
Service as a Differentiator
Service and support – is
If Product, Price and Service are the key differentiators and you want to avoid a ‘race to the bottom’ with a ‘me
too’ product then looking after users with a great service wrap seems to be a bit of a no brainer. We asked channel
providers their opinions.
this the holy grail of
di erentiation today? e
support partner’s o er
to customers can vary widely.
Is this the battle eld partners
need to focus on to make their
o ering stand above the crowd?
We asked Peter Gradwell,
Founder and CTO of Gradwell
Communications, if uptime has
become the new battleground
for providers, how much stock
can users put in an SLA and
what should be considered
before agreeing a contract?
“No, it is no longer a battle
ground. Uptime is taken as a
given. All providers are now
o ering 99.99% SLAs.
environment where the IP
telephony solution is continually
being innovated and new
versions are being pushed out
actually demands:
1. really good testing and change
control
2. the ability to run multiple IP
telephony platforms, ideally in
two di erent geographies (i.e.
not all in London). To ensure
maximum uptime for its
channel partners’ customers,
Gradwell operates two data
centres one in London and
one in Ireland.
How many providers are
really able to demonstrate multicountry
resilience with hotfailover?
Gradwell has recently
deployed its IP telephony
solution via Amazon Web
Services (AWS). is means we
can stand up a whole new region
(e.g. Singapore, New York)
inside an hour, automatically
scaling up capacity within ve
to10 minutes.”
Justin Blaine at NTA, says
his company has the ethos of a
technology driven business not a
sales focused machine
“ erefore we consider
our support to be our ‘centre
of excellence’. We have six
dedicated helpdesk team
members who pick up the
phone, deal with problems there
and then as we are fully aware if
you call us you need us and do
not want to face long queues, callbacks
or wait for us to return calls
when you and your customer
need help immediately.”
Nathan Hill-Haines
Managing Director of She eld
based reseller Amvia, has a
di erent starting point.
“We start with asking what
does the customer want? And
other than functionality that any
well-built platform should have,
what would they value? More
often than not call costs come
into play.
99 times out of one-hundred,
customers want a simple and
transparent buying process that
helps them understand what
they are buying, which in turn
builds trust in the provider they
are buying from. Outside of
that, they couldn’t care less if it
was Broadcloud, 8X8 or 3CX.”
KEY FACTS:
• 96% of users say customer service is an important factor in loyalty to
a supplier/brand
• 75% of users would pay more for exceptional service
• 89% of users feel frustrated if they have to repeat their issues to
multiple agents
It is worth remembering that
in some cases, SLAs are often not
worth the paper they are written
on i.e. they usually have a four or
six hour x time before they kick
in. For most businesses, especially
those who receive large volumes
of calls from their customers, four
to six hours with no phone service
is just not acceptable.
e old adage that anything
is only as good as its weakest
link comes into play here. Most
broadband provider’s SLAs are
very slow which in turn leads to
massive disruption to the ‘over
the top’ (OTT) voice service.
Uptime is easy when you
don’t change anything. But to
deliver > 99.99% in a modern
Peter Gradwell, Founder and CTO of Gradwell Communications
30 | IP Telephony 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.commsbusiness.co.uk