Skyetel Relationship Pricing
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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.
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@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.
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@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.
We are a consultant and do this constantly, and don't have this. Because WE are the IT department, WE already had the conversation. And in fact, to Skyetel, working with NTG or Bundy over and over again reduces their overhead each time, because we know their system better, they know us better. So as the volume increases, the rate of overhead decreases (meaning... if we need one hour of support per year for 50 customers, we likely need only 70 minutes of support time a year for 100 customers and only 80 minutes for 200 customers and so on.) The bulk of our support needs come from the first setup that we do. It drops off fast.
To add new customers to your pricing, because the IT relationship is already in place, takes like 30 seconds and no phone time spent. You just need your customer's account number, and just open a ticket to let Skyetel know that they are part of your group so get your pricing regime. I do this every few days, takes seconds. I don't have to "talk" to anyone. It's as easy as it would be to add the customer's account number to a spreadsheet.
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@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.
That's a good question - @Skyetel what would be the process for @JaredBusch to onboard a new customer? As a none reseller - would you check each of his customers to see if they qualify for your above list and decide if they pay MSRP or get some lower rate?
I do understand that the lower rate potential is completely based upon their calling style/destination, so I'm guessing that to get the best possible pricing JB would have to talk to someone on his customer's behalf each time he wanted to setup an account, or simply accept MSRP pricing.
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@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
I don't think you'd want it more in your face. Jared is an extreme edge case and we are talking about a few cents. Almost all customers want CalledID and Spam blocking, I don't know any who don't except for Jared. It's totally valid for him to not want those, but it is super uncommon, to the point that it was a surprise that he didn't.
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@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
That's a good question - @Skyetel what would be the process for @JaredBusch to onboard a new customer? As a none reseller - would you check each of his customers to see if they qualify for your above list and decide if they pay MSRP or get some lower rate?
No, because Jared is doing that for them. 99% of the "checking" that they do is of Jared, not of the customer. What little bit of the customer needs to be checked, would be Jared doing it normally. Because they know what kinds of clients he has, he knows now to suddenly bring in a federal agency or an international spam house.
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@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
I do understand that the lower rate potential is completely based upon their calling style/destination, so I'm guessing that to get the best possible pricing JB would have to talk to someone on his customer's behalf each time he wanted to setup an account, or simply accept MSRP pricing.
If they needed super awesome pricing for a unique need that is different from Jared's. Then yes, but that would always be a unique conversation with any vendor anywhere. Just like with, for example, Microsoft.
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@scottalanmiller said in Relationship Pricing:
To add new customers to your pricing, because the IT relationship is already in place, takes like 30 seconds and no phone time spent. You just need your customer's account number, and just open a ticket to let Skyetel know that they are part of your group so get your pricing regime. I do this every few days, takes seconds. I don't have to "talk" to anyone. It's as easy as it would be to add the customer's account number to a spreadsheet.
Not sure this is right. I suppose it's possible - but I could see Skyetel wanting all of the above listed information for each new customer because the pricing would be based upon those metrics.
Let's say all of your customers to date are continental US only, with rare if ever international/Alaska/Hawaii calls - the rate these customers get could be super low. But now, you want to bring in a client that calls Hawaii/Alaska daily, etc - they likely can't get the same rate - if they did Skyetel could end up losing money on that customer.
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@scottalanmiller said in Relationship Pricing:
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
That's a good question - @Skyetel what would be the process for @JaredBusch to onboard a new customer? As a none reseller - would you check each of his customers to see if they qualify for your above list and decide if they pay MSRP or get some lower rate?
No, because Jared is doing that for them. 99% of the "checking" that they do is of Jared, not of the customer. What little bit of the customer needs to be checked, would be Jared doing it normally. Because they know what kinds of clients he has, he knows now to suddenly bring in a federal agency or an international spam house.
I think you are missing the point, that I believe @JaredBusch does, which is he has his clients go out to a vendor like @Skyetel and register their own account and pay the bill directly. He just punches in the details into the PBX for the customer once the account is active.
Correct @JaredBusch ?
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@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
Not sure this is right. I suppose it's possible
I do this all the time. I know how it works
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@DustinB3403 said in Relationship Pricing:
@scottalanmiller said in Relationship Pricing:
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
That's a good question - @Skyetel what would be the process for @JaredBusch to onboard a new customer? As a none reseller - would you check each of his customers to see if they qualify for your above list and decide if they pay MSRP or get some lower rate?
No, because Jared is doing that for them. 99% of the "checking" that they do is of Jared, not of the customer. What little bit of the customer needs to be checked, would be Jared doing it normally. Because they know what kinds of clients he has, he knows now to suddenly bring in a federal agency or an international spam house.
I think you are missing the point, that I believe @JaredBusch does, which is he has his clients go out to a vendor like @Skyetel and register their own account and pay the bill directly. He just punches in the details into the PBX for the customer once the account is active.
Correct @JaredBusch ?
That's exactly how I'm expecting Jared to do it. He's identical to us, and we do this regularly. I did it yesterday. Everything I said is based on that.
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@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. -
@Dashrender said in Relationship Pricing:
Let's say all of your customers to date are continental US only, with rare if ever international/Alaska/Hawaii calls - the rate these customers get could be super low. But now, you want to bring in a client that calls Hawaii/Alaska daily, etc - they likely can't get the same rate - if they did Skyetel could end up losing money on that customer.
That's true, if you are assuming a really aggressive pricing structure for you based on a deep use case, and not stock relationship pricing as a starting point. There is a price point for normal relationship, and then there is aggressive negotiating for something better based on extremely specific use cases. Keep those ideas separate, because SMBs don't do the latter, ever. Not with Skyetel, not with Microsoft. So while they have that (everyone does), it really doesn't apply to anyone here.
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@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 can happen. I guarantee that Jared is like NTG and sometimes customers do this and sometimes we do. Depends on who they want to hold the credit card.
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@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".
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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.
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@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".
That's often what we do. And screen share to do the setup if they need help, but they rarely do.
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@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.
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@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?
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@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.
