I was out with one of our JolaPhone dealers last week demonstrating the platform. The customer, warming to the concept, made the point that they would probably need to upgrade from their existing ADSL circuit to either Fibre broadband or a leased line. The dealer replied that he agreed but it was not something they got involved in. When the customer nipped out to get their BT bills I ask Jon why he felt that way. He said they did not do 24/7 support and the 36 month commitment on leased lines worried him in case the customer went bust or didn’t pay. Dealing with the carriers was a pain he said. It took ages to get prices from them all and even then he had to haggle to be sure he was getting the best deal. By the time he went back to the customer they had usually progressed the circuit with someone else.
I explained that Jola handled support and billing and I showed him Jola’s auto-quote system on my iPhone. We put in the customer's address there and then and two minutes later the system had confirmed they could get Fibre broadband and had emailed Jon the best prices for 20, 50 and 100 Mb/s Ethernet, EFM and EoFTTC from every major carrier. When the customer came back into the room Jon recommended a connectivity product and gave him the price. The customer had known Jon for a long time and was very open that he would need to get a comparative quote. Jon suggested he call BT there and then and as we were leaving 20 minutes later BT called back with a price which was marginally more expensive than the one we had given him.
I heard from Jon this morning that his customer was going ahead with the hosted phone system and the leased line. He decided that he would rather get everything from one supplier so there could be no finger-pointing if things went wrong. He also liked the idea that we ran QoS over the circuit to protect the voice, up and down. Jon felt a lot happier because he kept control of all the customer’s IT and comms requirements. So often getting another supplier involved had confused things and he would inevitably find himself trouble-shooting other people’s problems. Now he had the start of a nice monthly recurring revenue stream and didn’t have to worry about competing with the network supplier every time an opportunity came up with his customer.
If you’re interested, our new quote tool is trade-only so you will need to register below:
You don’t need to be a Jola Partner to use it and there is no agreement to sign until your customer commits to go ahead. Your quotes are held in your own secure area and in any case there is no necessity to include your customer’s name or contact details.
