One of my coaching clients asked me how to dig deep into a service providers knowledge base to insure that they can actually deliver on what they say. I had to chuckle.
In most cases, only a few people at any service provider really know what is under the hood in any detail. Two examples for you follow.
I ordered a PRI from a CLEC. I asked numerous times if it was TDM PRI or not. The Channel Manager reassured me that it was a PRI. Finally, when I received the FOC date, I asked once more: Was this a true TDM PRI or was this PRI signaling at the CPE. It turns out that it was PRI signaling from the CPE and a SIP Trunk back to the CLEC. BAM! Cancel the order. Start over.
In the another case, the Agent is trying to determine if the Cisco 7900 phones can be used when the customer migrates to another Hosted PBX provider. A couple of ITSP's have said YES; a couple have said NO. It made the Agent insecure in proposing a solution since he couldn't get a straight answer. [Cisco 7900 were running MGCP, while most ITSP's run SIP.]
The problem is that everyone is only looking at Quota and getting the contract signed. Our industry is sliding away from the Customer Matters.
What good is it to get the contract signed only to not be able to deliver on service?
That's a lot of wasted manpower plus hard costs for anything ordered from the ILEC. Not to mention, you burn the Agent and the Customer.
Not many CLEC's worry about branding, but most of the Branding occurs closest to the customer, where WOM (word-of-mouth) and relationships occur. If you give incorrect information, if you lie, if you don't care if the information is accurate, you are ruining 3 brands: the CLEC, the Agent and YOUR OWN.
One way to avoid this is to limit the number of carriers you deal with. It's a challenge to know anything in-depth about 20 carriers, let allow 40 or 100. And in the ITSP sector, I think you need to take a regional approach. You want to be selling someone as close to the customer as possible for QOS and other reasons.
At the end of the day, you may make mistakes due to bad information. All you can do is give your customer the best choices you can and be as transparent as possible. When the mistake happens, apologize, work to fix it fast and give the customer Plan B.
agents apps att broadband broadsoft cable cableco cellular channel partners clec cloud communications cloud computing commissions data center FCC fcc fiber financials hosted pbx internet itexpo marketing master agency mergers politics sales security sellecom selling strategy TCA telecom is broken UC unified messaging VAR voip vz vzw wireless wireline
- AI (4)
- Add category (2)
- BPI (10)
- BPaaS (10)
- CALEA (2)
- CLEC (250)
- FCC (200)
- FTC (10)
- IOT (17)
- IPTV (14)
- ISP (60)
- Internet (248)
- Marketing (283)
- PBX (180)
- PR (27)
- SDN (46)
- TCA (72)
- TEM (16)
- TMC (26)
- VAD (9)
- VAR (149)
- VDI (10)
- Web 2.0 (48)
- Yahoo (9)
- agents (446)
- amazon (23)
- apps (122)
- backup (41)
- bandwidth (70)
- bellsouth agent (22)
- books (15)
- broadband (235)
- broadsoft (124)
- cableco (200)
- cellular (243)
- certification (17)
- channel (432)
- cloud computing (286)
- colocation (43)
- commissions (103)
- communications (66)
- compliance (22)
- comptia (5)
- conferences (66)
- conferencing (68)
- crm (8)
- cybersecurity (2)
- data center (128)
- disaster recovery (35)
- duopoly (71)
- e-book (4)
- economy (129)
- email (27)
- ethernet (23)
- expo (117)
- fiber (124)
- glossary (2)
- hosted uc (266)
- im/chat (28)
- jobs (32)
- linkedin (38)
- managed services (54)
- master agency (68)
- mergers (395)
- metaswitch (12)
- mobile (57)
- mpls (55)
- msp (50)
- off topic (48)
- organizations (82)
- outage (19)
- politics (136)
- privacy (41)
- saas (92)
- sales and selling (271)
- satellite (17)
- sdn (28)
- security (94)
- sip trunking (83)
- smb (65)
- social network (76)
- spectrum (68)
- startup (27)
- technology (134)
- telco (253)
- tele-presence (22)
- telecommunications (229)
- training (42)
- twitter (44)
- unified communications (258)
- vc (9)
- video (86)
- voip (436)
- webRTC (16)
- wi-fi (29)
- wimax (33)
- wireless (167)
- wireline (179)
- xmpp (5)
- xo (54)
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
Featured Videos