SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




Communications is Still Key: 888VoIP Talks Partners, ITEXPO

Featured Articles from IP Phones

Communications is Still Key: 888VoIP Talks Partners, ITEXPO

 
February 07, 2017

Share
Tweet
  By Stefania Viscusi, Assignment Desk, Content Management

There’s nothing more important than customers when it comes to success. If you’re a service provider or a retailer – the fact remains that delivering quality care for customers trumps any all other attempts to succeed.

 For 888VoIP, a value-added distributor of VoIP solutions, partnerships with customers are a main focus. Through its Channel Advantage Program, it makes it possible for service providers, resellers, and integrators to have hardware, provisioning, fulfillment, pre & post-sales support as well as support for technical needs so they too can focus on their customers.


We recently caught up with COO David Vance to talk more about the company and participation at this week’s ITEXPO business technology event happening in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The company will be exhibiting at Booth #507 at the show as well as sponsoring the ITEXPO (News - Alert) Networking After Dark Party along with other industry leaders.

Our exchange follows.

What does the term Collaboration mean to your business?

In our business, collaboration means the coming together of different individuals; both internally & externally, to share ideas, work together, and create solutions that will achieve some common goal.  We want our employees at 888VoIP to feel a strong sense of purpose when they work with one another or with partners, and we want our customers to see the ultimate value in working with our company.  By collaborating on a daily basis with one another, we not only achieve our goals, but also achieve purpose & value.

What elements of Unified Communications (News - Alert) are most useful for your company?
Today, unified communications are an important part of our company’s culture.  Unified communications allows our customers to reach our team in several ways, which makes our organization much more efficient.  Having the ability to take offices calls wherever you are - whether you are on the road, working from home, or at the office – means our company can be mobile as well as flexible.  Also with find me, follow me, presence and chat features, it’s very easy to keep in contact with our team.  WebRTC is becoming an important element as well, in order to communicate products webinars, and demos, without a reoccurring monthly cost. 

Are you using messaging technologies to communicate with your customers?  How, or why not?
We use several different technologies to communicate with our customers.  First and foremost, we have phone communication.  We also use email, text, instant messaging as well.  We try and utilize what our customers are using, and make it easier for them.  Today, phone and email is still by far the most efficient, and most used methods of communication.

Content marketing has become a hot topic recently.  Have you defined a content marketing strategy and how has it helped you build your business?

We recently began formulating a content marketing strategy, identifying what is valuable to our current and potential customers - versus a basic sales or marketing pitch on products that may.   It’s easy to market and pitch a product, but it’s not easy to deliver a message to customers as to why your business will create value for them.

We are in the early phases, revamping our website to go from product-focused to customer-focused, emphasizing different services that our customers could utilize to build their own business & increase their revenue.  Our e-mail blasts & social media updates now reflect this strategy, and there will be increasingly more marketing materials, such as information videos & infographics, in the near future.

To what extent are you leveraging APIs to enhance business opportunities?
Today, we have a RestfulAPI for our partners to interface with, so that their customers can place orders with them, and the orders are automatically sent to 888VoIP to handle the fulfillment and logistics.  The API allows for the accurate data to be passed to our ordering system, so we have all of the information to provision and blind ship VoIP hardware efficiently, and correctly to our partner’s customers.

What percentage of your workforce would you consider mobile?  What technology decisions have you made as a result of your mobile workforce, to ensure they have the tools they need to remain productive?

All of our employees have the ability to work remotely, or mobile.  For the most part, we have been equipped to be mobile since started our company.  Our PBX (News - Alert) as unified communications features that allow us to accept calls wherever we are located.

How has the growth in the managed services market impacted your business?

The growth of managed services as really had a major impact on our business.  Since we focus on open standard VoIP hardware, we are seeing many MSP’s that are adopting voice services in their model.  The traditional voice only companies are starting to fade away, and are being replaced by the MSP’s, which now are not only managing a company’s IT services, but now managing that company PBX or voice services as well.

Is the cloud / MSP model a realistic one for reliable IT security?
From a voice perspective, I think you will continue to see options for both hosted and on-premises systems due to security issues. 

Are channel partners keeping up with the latest trends and developments?  Is more education needed and how can they better leverage the latest technologies to grow?

Channel partners do a good job of staying up on the latest trends, but we feel it’s important as organization to help with keeping our customers updated of the latest developments as well.  We offer things such as demos, webinars, and onsite trainings in order to keep our partner updated, and certified on the latest products and solutions.

What will you have on display at your booth and why should attendees make it a point to visit you at your booth?

At our booth, we will have a variety of different telecom products on display – from different manufacturers, including Yealink, Grandstream, and Patton (News - Alert).  We will also have our 888VoIP expert team present at the booth to speak with potential customers about solutions that can propel their business. We will also be featuring & discussing our Channel Advantage program, which is a comprehensive program that 888VoIP partners can become a part of.  It gives them options to use 888VoIP’s team for provisioning, inventory management, restful API, marketing materials, and training & education.  888VoIP will also be giving away some great prizes at ITEXPO 2017 – such as an iPad Mini, GoPro (News - Alert) camera, and Apple TV!

What are you most looking forward to at ITEXPO 2017?

We are most looking forward to connecting with our current partners and making many new connections at ITEXPO 2017.  We are also looking forward to providing potential solutions for prospective customers – these solutions will only help them expand their business & succeed in the future, and that’s something we want to help assist them with.




Edited by Alicia Young
Article comments powered by Disqus
IP Phones Homepage






Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2024 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy