Page 4 - Telecom Reseller November-December 2016

4 Telecom Reseller
November/December 2016
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BRAMSON
continued from page 1
only the person in Accounting who received
the phone bill knew the identity of the phone service provider. How long before those device manufacturers’ names are replaced by Salesforce or Zoho? It’s already happening. And I think the reason why is simple: it’s the demarc.
For non-telecom folks the demarc is the demarcation between the end of the telecom provider’s network and the beginning of the
It’s natural to think that the answer to this sort of question is always, “whatever is best
for the user”, and this is a solid rule-of-thumb. But what if what’s best for the user is for your service to disappear, to be completely subsumed by another so that most users aren’t even
aware they’re consuming your service at all? Increasingly CRM applications like Salesforce, Microso Dynamics, SugarCRM, Zoho, and others are the
business tool
that dominates
the work ow.
Users, especially
salespeople,
utilize CRM
constantly –
sending and
receiving email
through it, making and receiving phone calls through it, using it to schedule meetings and other events, and to take notes. Switching or swiveling to a phone service is not what most
of them want. What it seems many want is a phone service that is relegated to a small box
or thin bar that gives them just the very basics
– make a call, answer a call, put a call on hold, and maybe a few more common functions – and doesn’t get in the way of their CRM user experience.
Typical Phone Service CRM Plugin: Who’s the phone service provider? Who cares?
ere is a precedent for all this. It used to be (and to some extent still is) the case that many businesspeople believed their phone service to be provided by Avaya or Cisco. Of course this was because those were the brands on the devices that they used. Very o en
customer’s. In a home or o ce it’s o en a grey box mounted on an interior or exterior wall. e telecom provider doesn’t touch anything on the customer’s side and the customer is warned to do the same regarding the provider’s side of
the demarc. e demarc makes a ton of sense operationally – especially for telecom providers.
But for many phone service providers the demarc doesn’t simply exist on the walls of their customers, it exists in their strategic thinking. ey have trained themselves not to concern themselves with anything on the customer’s side. e problem is that most of the signi cant, di erentiated value to be had is on that side. Increasingly it’s not enough to simply send a phone call into a customer’s business, you need to help them route that call to the right person, let that person know who’s calling and even why, and help them complete a transaction
on that call. Resellers should be seeking out phone service providers that embrace this and are delivering services that help businesses
solve their most-urgent problems: winning and keeping customers. ■
It’s natural to think that the nswer to this sort of question is always, “whatever is best for the user”
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