Skyetel Relationship Pricing
-
@DustinB3403 said in Relationship Pricing:
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
@DustinB3403 said in Relationship Pricing:
@JaredBusch said in Relationship Pricing:
As a consultant, I would repeatedly have to have this conversation with you for every client of mine that would choose this option.
What an annoyance.
If I was a reseller, sure, that is easy, I just sign up a new account under my reseller account and move one.
But I'm not.
So you'd tell your client "I like this vendor for phone service, their pricing is goofy, but if you call them and setup an account they'll give you better pricing" ?
And I understand the business stance from your point of view, you never want to have a bill sitting out there that your client is ultimately due for, so it makes sense to have them create the account and get billed directly for the minutes used.
Rather than you having to bill the client for their minutes used at the end of a month or whatever.
In my case - I made the accounts for my clients.. then I setup the email notices to go directly to the billing people at the client and gave the logons needed to the clients so they could pay the bill. The client themselves never talked to the telco provider - that was all me.
I'm guessing JB does the same.That's weird though, it means the end client has no choice in who they use unless there is a conversation about SIP providers and then makes a decision. Possible that occurs, but just weird.
Rather I'd expect the conversation to be "I'd recommend any of this SIP providers, setup an account with X and get back to me with the details".
Of course they have the choice - but in so many of these cases - they simply ask their consultant - who do you use? As mentioned in the other thread - we are paid for our advice, not as a VAR, we aren't reselling anything, so we are offering the best advice as the advocate of the client. So of course I say - I suggest this telco provider. The client can always say - no, I don't want them, please use blah instead - and I will. Assuming a relationship with blah doesn't already exist, it's likely that I'll be the one setting up the accounts with blah, just like I would be for the vendor I suggested. Of course, if the client wants to setup the account themselves, they are more than welcome to.
-
@Skyetel said in Relationship Pricing:
For clarity's sake - @scottalanmiller is correct. The "Relationship" is with NTG - so the NTG pricing applies to their customers. All Scott does is put in a ticket with the account information for his customer, and our support department handles the rest (updates the NTG customer's rates). It takes 30 seconds.
The only exception is if that customer turns out to be fraudster or randomly started calling really really expensive places or gets hacked all the time. In those cases, we'd call NTG about it since we have a Relationship and address the issue. That has never happened before though - so its not something to worry about.
Ok, so the rates aren't so cutrate that you're really worried about a massively different type of use client is brought on board by NTG, etc. That does make it much easier than.
The clients that NTG brings you each get their own account number and billing statements directly to themselves, right?
-
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
Now, To @JaredBusch's point, there was some lack notification about pre setup settings - but I'm glad to hear that Skyetel has already updated their webpages to inform people of these - though frankly - I think it could be much more in your face - or during account setup, it's required that one acknowledge those setting specifically that users can/will incur charges from OR change the default to a setting where there will be no charges.
I can't imagine a customer being upset that upon setting up service they don't get those anti-spam services, etc - then upon learning then need/want them, they can go back and turn them on - and be notified of the service fee associated with those services. Charging the customer as little as possible (i.e. no extra services turned on by default) until the customer turns on costing features is definitely a more customer-centric view.
We will actually be adding it to the Port In email so that new customers know to modify their numbers prior to them going into service.
The reason those features are on by default is as follows:
- Caller ID - When it was disabled by default, we actually got a lot of complaints from our users that "Caller ID" didn't work. (Remember not all of our users are VoIP Experts and understand how SIP Trunking works!)
- Spam Block typically pays for itself - it reduces your inbound traffic volume by about 10% on published numbers. So the cost to have it enabled is roughly equal to the cost to leaving it disabled. In March, it blocked 10.1% of inbound calls when enabled - so its really really powerful.
-
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
@Skyetel said in Relationship Pricing:
For clarity's sake - @scottalanmiller is correct. The "Relationship" is with NTG - so the NTG pricing applies to their customers. All Scott does is put in a ticket with the account information for his customer, and our support department handles the rest (updates the NTG customer's rates). It takes 30 seconds.
The only exception is if that customer turns out to be fraudster or randomly started calling really really expensive places or gets hacked all the time. In those cases, we'd call NTG about it since we have a Relationship and address the issue. That has never happened before though - so its not something to worry about.
Ok, so the rates are so cutrate that you're really worried about a massively different type of use client is brought on board by NTG, etc. That does make it much easier than.
The clients that NTG brings you each get their own account number and billing statements directly to themselves, right?
Correct - they use their own Credit Card, and have complete access to our portal. There is no re-billing. We just expect that support tickets come from NTG and not the customer directly.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Relationship Pricing:
Almost all customers want CalledID
I've never stated I do not want CallerID services. But I prefer not to pay for it on every call.
Services like OpenCNAM are much better, because FreePBX can be set to not perform a lookup on ever call.
Sure it is only $0.008 (OpenCNAM) or $0.004 (Skyetel) per call, but it adds up.
250,000 inbound calls per year * $0.004 = $1,000
250,000 inbound calls per year * $0.008 = $2,000But with the second one there, I only perform a lookup once every 30 days for numbers that call me.
Edit: I am fairly busy today, but I can pull numbers on this to compare inbound calls to OpenCNAM usage.
-
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
The clients that NTG brings you each get their own account number and billing statements directly to themselves, right?
Correct. We might get a login to see their biling, we might not. but it is their account.
-
@JaredBusch said in Relationship Pricing:
But with the second one there, I only perform a lookup once every 30 days for numbers that call me.
Is this because FreePBX caches the info?
-
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
@JaredBusch said in Relationship Pricing:
But with the second one there, I only perform a lookup once every 30 days for numbers that call me.
Is this because FreePBX caches the info?
Yes, but any system can be setup that way.
