What if your phone service provider delivered customer service as if they were located next door to your office? Fantasy? Perhaps, but your business deserves it! You should consider moving to a hosted phone service where your business phone equipment and phone service are provided by the same company. The formula will be in place to make awesome customer service delivery possible, and it will then be a responsibility of that provider to make it happen.
At sipVine, we have built this concept into our core beliefs and practices, as we understand
what it will mean to a customer to feel that they are receiving remarkable customer service from a telecommunications provider. The marketplace has been under serviced, subject to a series of a voice recognition entry points just to have your call delivered to a service representative who doesn’t have a clue of who you are and how your business uses communication services.
There are a few ways in which we make this possible:
No Contracts – sipVine’s philosophy is that no customer should be bound to a term contract with us to achieve discounts or other advantages. We have a simple rate schedule that drives savings to our customers. Moreover, we sincerely believe that we need to earn our business each and every day, and have built such a belief system into our culture and practices.
Customization – Customers expect that their investment in new technology will provide them with features and benefits that their current system doesn’t offer. However, we take that one step further in that our technology is very flexible and can be customized to meet their needs or enhance their communication practices. We hold extensive configuration meetings with the customer prior to installation so that we can fully understand their communication patterns and consult on the best design for their system deployment. We then handle all of the programming to make this happen. Not only does this help guarantee satisfaction, it gives us the opportunity to get to know our customers in a very detailed way.
The Phone Company Next Door – Because we get to know our customers in great detail and that knowledge is specifically passed to all service personnel, we are able to deliver a feeling to our customers that we are their personal phone department. We handle all of their phone administration for them, and thus are in position for routine contact with a variety of people within the organization. Whether we are servicing a company based in Kansas City where we are located, or one of our customers in other cities across the country, we routinely delight them through this approach of providing service as if we were the phone company next door.
As I mentioned, the capability of delivering such service is quite possible for any hosted VoIP provider. As you research potential providers, ask a series of questions that will uncover their approach to service and reveal if they are leveraging the unique opportunity to deliver superb service. Here are just a few:
- Are you able to customize the call flow and other features to meet my unique business needs? Do you do this programming or is it incumbent upon me to do the set up via a web portal?
- When I call for service or administration, where does this call go? Will I be talking with someone who knows my business and the unique configuration we may have? Are your technicians contract or overseas?
- Are the officers of the company engaged in service delivery in any capacity?
This should help provide an idea as to how they approach customer service. Happy hunting and remember, your business deserves it!
About the author: Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.
