UCaaS is growing at a phenomenal rate and provides significant opportunities for resellers to secure recurring revenue and add huge value to their customers. To provide a clearer idea of what to look out for in a UCaaS service provider, we’ve highlighted what we think are the most important.
Roadmap and innovation are key: Your customers aren’t just buying the product you’ve demoed today; they’re buying into the innovation you’ll deliver tomorrow. When selecting a UCaaS partner, make sure you can see a clear picture of their recent releases, what they have added over the last year and what’s on their roadmap.
Stability, resilience and reliability: One of the top reasons customers change their UCaaS provider is instability and user issues, so it’s vital to understand the underlying infrastructure that the service provider has invested in. Ask lots of questions about their uptime, data centre and resilience.
Brand: Give your customers the added confidence by showing them a brand they recognise and trust. They perceive the depth of resources and technical smarts needed to deliver their UCaaS solution and want to trust the vendor you’ve chosen to deliver it.
Channel-only focus: Ensure your UCaaS provider is channel-only and cooperates with your business, not competes with it. It will assure a reseller that their business model is protected and their business’ future is assured. Don’t let other major vendors push you into an agency model and own the relationship and billing. It will erode your business value and put you at risk.
Heritage, experience, and a proven platform: The increasing number of new entrants in the market delivering low-feature propositions will affect end-users. There’s a great opportunity for customers moving to cloud from a traditional PBX, so it’s essential to continue offering the solution features that a customer is used to relying on, such as call park, night service, and in addition to all the great new features.
WebRTC, Collaboration, CRM, and vertical market integrations: Customers are just as keen to adopt new technology as vendors and service providers. New technology such as WebRTC delivers benefits for businesses of all sizes, including the reseller. Its easy and quick deployment, along with simple access to UC and collaboration tools, will further enhance your customer’s user experience. The ability to integrate all of this into their existing systems will also be a critical component of the solution.
Differentiation is a double-edged sword: Look for a product that gives you the best of both worlds and helps deliver a differentiated proposition that the customer will also trust.
Add-ins, value adds and ARPU drivers: These are a great way to keep your onboarded customers engaged and recurring revenues increasing. Look for simple add-ins with a trial period that can help you drive up Average Revenue Per User. Tools like advanced analytics, collaboration, contact centre, call recording and other services will deliver huge value over the lifetime of your customer.
Support: Knowing that there’s someone there when a problem arises is critical, whether it’s technically or commercially. Have you got relationships with real people from your UCaaS partner? You never know when you’ll need some help or a favour. Also, look for a partner who delivers you tools that make your life easier – including portals, provisioning, pricing and proposal tools, marketing kits and sales training.
Before you make your final decision, look at their case studies and see who their partners are and if they’re successful. Don’t be afraid to ask to speak to their reseller partners, either.
If you think Pragma and Ericsson-LG could be the right fit as your UCaaS partner, then contact us today – we’d be happy to talk and we’ll be as open and honest with you as we have been throughout this blog post. That’s a promise.
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