“What is true is that the bigger players are consolidating by buying base, but this is the ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ business model. It appeals to some in the channel and to some of their customers that are purely price driven and are happy with a ‘one size fits all’ approach. But a significant number of channel dealers and resellers are looking for a service and not just a price point that they can in turn offer to their customers.
Fundamentally nobody that owns and runs their own business wants to be treated as a commodity that can be bought or sold. They want to be treated professionally and increasingly that want access to a full raft of services that includes hosted, mobile and data in addition to voice minutes. A lot of businesses in the channel, especially the smaller ones, want personalised service and support, someone that they can talk to where they can get information and advice. They want a bit more hand holding and they like to speak to the same person more than once.
Google telecom suppliers and you will find that there really is plenty of choice still out there. And the reason that players such as Frontier Voice & Data sustain themselves in this market is because we offer something the bigger players don’t – services and support from a dedicated business development team.
If you’re happy talking to a call centre agent, who is targeted to get you off the phone in under three minutes, when you need to resolve customer faults, then the big boys will meet your needs. If all you care about is hitting the lowest price possible and are happy with lots of customer churn, then the big players can provide that. And if you are OK about finding out your account has been sold on, when your statement arrives with a new logo at the top, then chose from one of the shrinking number of big outfits that are happy to ‘slice and dice’ your business as so much ‘base’.
But we aim to prove that being the biggest doesn’t mean the best service, because we try harder!”