3 Things VoIP Providers Don’t Tell Small Businesses

We have been a Vancouver VoIP provider since 2013. Over that time we have learned a few things about this industry that providers tend not to volunteer during the sales process. None of them are secrets in a conspiratorial sense. They are simply the parts of the business that are inconvenient to mention while you are deciding who to buy from.

1. The technical hurdles are real, and they land on you

Every new installation brings its own problems. Routers that mishandle SIP traffic, switches without enough power budget, wiring that was fine for analogue phones and is not fine now. Some of these take our team several hours and more than one visit to sort out.

When we do the install, you never see any of that. We turn up, work through it, and your phones work. It is the duck on the water: calm above, a lot of activity underneath.

Now picture buying from a large provider based in California or Ottawa. The sales process covers the features, the mobile app, the cloud PBX and all its advantages. Then a box of phones and cables arrives, and you are the one crawling under desks, hunting for network cables, driving to the store, and working out why four handsets registered and two did not. You call support and learn you need a different router. That router takes five days to arrive, and until it does you have no phones.

This is the main argument for choosing a local provider. Someone who can come to your office and do the work should not be a premium feature.

2. Customer service is the largest cost a provider has

There are real costs in networks, phone numbers and servers, but the biggest expense by far is the people answering the phone. Technicians skilled enough to diagnose a VoIP problem properly are expensive to hire and take months to train.

Which leads somewhere uncomfortable: the cheaper the service, the less the provider can afford to support it. The shortcuts are predictable once you know to look for them. Email only support. On-site visits billed as extras. Support outsourced to lower cost countries. None of these are disclosed at the point of sale, and all of them are how a low monthly rate becomes possible.

We do not outsource, and we hire at level 2 rather than staffing a queue with script readers. You will not be passed between departments, and if something cannot be fixed remotely a technician comes to you. Our five customer promises set out what that means in practice.

3. Many providers are reselling somebody else’s platform

The largest phone provider in BC does not operate its own VoIP platform. Telus Business Connect is RingCentral, resold under the Telus name through a partnership between the two companies. Customers are consistently surprised, and often annoyed, when they find out.

The problem with reselling is not the technology. It is what happens when something goes wrong. Your provider did not build the platform, cannot change it, and cannot escalate any faster than you could. You are buying a service that sits outside the control of the company selling it to you.

Our view is that a provider should own what it sells and be answerable for all of it. If you are comparing quotes, it is worth asking each one a direct question: do you own the network my calls will run on?

If you are comparing providers

Our plans and pricing are public and our hosted PBX runs on our own network. If you would like a straight answer about whether we are the right fit for your business, our Vancouver team is happy to give you one.