The Value We Provide

Reduce Cellular Expenses For Your Business

According to the Gartner Group, 2006 played witness to the first time in the SME market that cellular costs exceeded all other telecom expenses. One of the first things that usually raises its ugly head is overages. This only has to happen once or twice at the 1000 to 2000 minutes level and grown men weep. This is where the cell company plan structure swings dramatically in their favor. “Well Mr. Smith, you are currently at 10,000 minutes at a cost of $550 per month. Your overage of 1,485 minutes @ $.45 per minute comes to $668.25. The next plan is a 20,000-minute plan for $1,100 per month. If you would like to sign up for the new plan today I can deduct 50% of your overage charges. What would you like to do?” What do you think Mr. Smith is going to do? He is going to pay for 80% to 90% more minutes than he needs ($6,600 per year, every year) so he never has to worry about overages again. Installing a CGW on the voice network will result in a reduction in paid minutes of between 30% to 70% or more. Business cell phone minutes that are from the field to the office and the office to the field that were previously accounted for from the paid minutes bucket are now from the mobile-to-mobile minutes bucket. Cellular calls to toll free numbers or to overseas locations both use paid minutes with international calling an additional surcharge of some sort. Instead of dialing direct, cellular users will call the pilot number of the CGW, receive access to the PBX, then outdial to their desired party. Calls to 800 numbers are now truly toll free for the cell user, while calls to international numbers are now billed at the PBX or VoIP rate. With CGW’s, cost containment is a done deal. And as you can see, cellular cost reduction has a tremendous upside potential.

Stay Connected In Case Of Disaster

What is your company’s plan in case of an emergency, or if clumsy utility workers slice your connection to the outside world? It’s called Business Continuity… sounds expensive. And it can be; from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars for products and/or services that do nothing until an emergency or disaster hits. With 46% of businesses estimating one hour of downtime costing $50k and another 8% estimating the costs at $1 million +, it becomes crystal clear why many companies and organizations have Emergency Response/Disaster Recovery Plans (ERP/DRP) in place. Unfortunately, more often than not, their primary and back up PRI’s have inherent design flaws. Some are routed through the same CO. Many of us have experienced or heard of a back up situation on the same cable! Even those really clever end users who have rerouted the back up through a different CO are still copper dependent for that last mile. Using cellular to enhance the ERP/DRP is an often overlooked application. Incorporating a PRI Cellular Gateway (CGW) as a part of the voice network provides the desired redundant PRI in a new and improved version, no longer copper dependent (Redundant PRI on Steroids!). It also doubles as an integral part of your voice network, converting pooled paid minutes traffic between the field and the office and the office and the field into mobile-to-mobile minutes. Unlike most if not all previous ERP/DRP telecom components, this one actually pays for itself. Quickly.

Protect Your Valuable Customer Relationships

It is not uncommon today for customers to expect to be able to reach their representative via their cell phone. That is considered the norm to providing top-level customer service. It conveys a clear message; “You are so important to me, for any reason, feel free to call my cell. I want to be sure I address your need.” The problem with providing this level of service is that when (not if) that trusted representative leaves the company, he/she effectively takes the relationship between “company and customer” with them. The customer will undoubtedly call that “former employee” on their cell phone. Therefore, the value of that customer relationship is compromised, or worse, lost. What’s the solution? Issue a phone extension (can even be a phantom extension) from the PBX to each customer representative that provides the option to the caller of out-dialing the reps cell phone. Not only is this now a mobile-to-mobile call with a CGW, if/when that rep leaves the company, a simple reprogram function of the “new representative’s” cell phone easily assures retention of the customer base.

Give Better Customer Service for Less Cost

In the highly competitive marketplace of today, savvy customers expect a higher level of service and that includes access to and interaction with the right people at the company with whom they spend their hard earned dollars. We all know it costs much more to capture a new client than to retain an existing client.  Doing all one can to keep them might seem to be the proper course of action. A smart approach would be to make the key contacts at your company as available as possible to your clients. As a Sales Manager once told me, “If you’re not romancing your client, somebody else is”. More and more business people understand this and are constantly adapting, looking for ways to be more available to their clients. For example, while not an official policy or a new entry into the unofficial Journal of Office Protocol,  more and more business voice mail greetings include some form of “Hello, you’ve reached the office of Tom Pitt, Director of Sales for Cruise Telecom. Please leave a detailed message. If you would like to try me on my cell phone press 1″. Many companies restrict this type of interaction, mainly out of concern for increasing cellular costs. The inclusion of a Cellular Gateway in this scenario would allow all calls from clients to the main office lines that were transferred to an employee cell phone to become mobile to mobile calls instead of being deducted from the paid pooled minutes bucket. No more restricting this invaluable customer relations tool. No more telling your employees to keep the calls short and wait until you are able to call them on a land line.  You no longer have any costs associated with this valuable method of customer service.