There has been an ongoing debate among VoIP consultants over the more beneficial prospect between owning and knowing the customer. Both sides have valid talking points with those on the pro-knowing side claiming that knowing the customer provides a better platform for interaction and profit making. While this is true to some extent the real benefits from customers can only be ripped from owning them. Private label VoIP gives resellers an opportunity to own customers and this has proven to be tremendously advantageous to them. So what is the importance of owning the customer?
Owning the Customer Provides Great Revenue to the Reseller
Before delving into the matter of revenue for the reseller it would be good to understand what a reseller does. A reseller provides VoIP services as though they were the actual service providers of the VoIP services which means they decide on the charges and terms and conditions of services between them and the employers. They only pay the actual service providers the agreed upon monthly fees and keep the rest of the revenue. Since they decide on the charges for the VoIP services, it means they basically decide on the amount of profits they want to get from their customers i.e. they get the maximum revenue they can accrue from the business.
In terms of having to pay the actual VoIP service providers, resellers do not lose much of their revenue because the actual private label VoIP providers charge at a constant rate which does not involve customer issues. The agreement between the reseller is exclusive of the private label company and this still gives the reseller the leeway to get as much revenue as they would want.
Resellers Have a Huge Enterprise Worth with Private Label VoIP
From the foregoing discussion it should be apparent that owning the customer must involve having a real business to which the customer can rightly affiliate to. The reseller owns an enterprise whose worth can be looked at in two important ways; branding and customer base. Starting with the simple yet significant matter of branding, resellers have a right to give the services any other name that isn’t necessarily from the actual service provider in order to drive sales. A reseller can therefore rightfully boast of a name in any business forum.
Resellers will always have a bargaining chip when looking for new customers or when new business opportunities arise because they will always have that backing of having an already existing customer base. They can boast of good relations if they have customers who have been on contract for a long period of time or they might as well just boast of the ability to get a large number of customers in a short time of their enterprise has only existed for a short period of time.
Owning the Customer Means Having Control over the Customer
Consultants who are for knowing the customers argue that customer owners don’t exactly benefit from having customer details including personal and transactional details because they cannot use it at their own dispensation while those who know the customer get close enough and get permissions to use the details to their benefits. This is true to some extent but the real truth goes far beyond this and for valid reasons. Resellers are people who own businesses and therefore run them in the proper way that any business should and this means they have contracts and terms and conditions that customers must adhere to in order for the business to run smoothly.
Contracts and terms and conditions can be simply summarized in fours words ‘having control over the customer’. A customer on contract cannot breach the terms of the contract by for example going to another reseller because they know there will be consequences that would probably end up in an ongoing unwanted court case. When it comes to terms and conditions, resellers somehow have an upper hand in deciding the charges for the VoIP services because they will probably have a clause that expressly allows them to change the prices under some circumstances.
The third case of controlling the customer comes on the positive aspect of giving them incentives and attractive offers to keep their interest in the same reseller. The reseller can decide on discounts and any other offers to encourage customer relations and they might even end up getting new customers while still clinging to the old ones.
With all these benefits, the need for knowing the customer becomes significantly obsolete because let’s face it; any business owner is after realizing profits and always being ahead of the competition and if owning the customer makes this happen in the most lucrative way then so be it.
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