When service providers can only compete on price, margins are bound to be squeezed. Currently, this is what’s happening in the UCaaS industry. However, if you’re a service provider that wants to stand out in the crowd, you can avoid the commoditisation trap by having your sales team continue to do their role well. They should still be identifying issues and business problems and attribute values to solving them by matching the benefits that your solutions deliver. 

 “When you understand your customers’ issues, you can build relevant products and promote their value to customers with targeted messaging that they will understand,” says Scott Goodwin, the Senior Vice President of International Market Development at NetSapiens. “To compete effectively in a commoditised industry, good sales skills are always required. You must know your customers and understand their pain.” 

Goodwin provides an example:

“If your customer is a restaurant owner, what is their establishment’s average booking by revenue? You need to know what each sitting is worth to their restaurant. Then you can figure out how much is lost for every customer that hangs up because they can’t get through. This indicates what your solution’s potential value is to the owner. And now that you have an order value, you can create a solution that leverages that value”  

The solution created could be a bundle of inbound call analytics, call queuing solutions, IVR or call back functions. These capabilities can have a tangible monetary impact to the customer because the bundle will solve problems they’re having.  

“Having the ability as a managed service provider (MSP) to create unique service bundles for customers in this way will differentiate your organisation and your offer from your competition,” says Goodwin. “And you can’t help but remain highly relevant to your customer because it’s clear you’re listening to them and understand what’s hurting them.” 

Another way to compete in a commoditised industry is with a disruptive price model. NetSapiens’ model allows partners to price their services independently of the amount of users or the functionality being offered. “This allows our partners to be far more creative on how they develop solutions while not directly impacting their costs,” adds Goodwin. “Licences under the NetSapiens model are only consumed if they are in use. We call it ‘sessions, not seats.’”  

One more suggestion for competing in the current UCaaS climate is by utilising all the elements of the solution. Goodwin recommends highlighting the product’s support tools like session initiation protocol (SIP) monitoring and QoS analysis and analytics. These tools assure customers that faults will be resolved quickly and proactive monitoring will ensure service continuity.    

In summary, the best way to compete in a very competitive market within a commoditised industry is to know your customers, provide them with quantifiable valuable solutions to address their pain, bundle unique services, use a vendor with a disruptive pricing model, and make use of all the elements of the solution, such as monitoring and analytical tools.  

 

 



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