How to keep your customers happy — and save money on their telecoms bills

It’s long been a truism that the easiest solutions to sell are the ones that save a company money and show an immediate return on investment.  It’s also no secret that in today’s cost conscious world, most companies are actively engaged in searching for ways to either increase profitability or reduce costs.
One such cost that frequently passes under the radar is that of telecoms. Often viewed as a necessary cost of doing business, what is not always recognised is that it is generally the highest cost – other than staffing and real estate – sustained by the average company. For channel partners actively engaged in selling telecoms infrastructure this represents a major, but often overlooked, opportunity to build customer trust and loyalty and to differentiate yourselves from your competitors focused solely on the core telephony.

A missed opportunity
Many Cisco (CSCO)resellers are actively engaged in selling the Cisco VoIP range of products and capitalising on the fact that VoIP – long hailed as the next big thing in telecoms – has now finally made it into the mainstream market.
What they haven’t necessarily recognised is the opportunity to go further in helping those customers identify ways in which they can reduce their telecoms bills by implementing a call accounting/management solution alongside their VoIP system which helps identify ways to reduce costs; most notably by identifying system abuse by employees, or attacks by external hackers such as in the case of an NHS PCT that received a bill for £50,000 one month in 2008 as a result of a malicious hacker accessing their voicemail system.

Telecoms fraud is a serious consideration for businesses both large and small: in 2008 it is estimated that dial through fraud (DTF) cost UK businesses around £1.3bn. Yet, it’s not only in highlighting instances of fraud that call accounting systems such as CTI’s Proteus can help save money.
Telecoms costs are spiralling out of control, due to a number of factors. These include the impact of voice and data convergence and the blurring of boundaries between telecom and IT costs and between home and work usage. Another common factor is the lack of clear cut company policies on telecoms usage and the number of individuals typically involved in the process of managing telecoms costs. This is further compounded by the difficulty many companies face in validating telecoms expenses and gaining clear insight into areas for potential cost savings, rendering telecoms costs the least understood expense in many IT departments.