For many resellers, the hard work only starts once an order has been taken. Whether the order is for a new phone system or hosted platform service or even a migration of hundreds of lines or broadband connections, the reseller is faced with the task of resourcing these projects whilst at the same time getting on with their primary objective of keeping the sales machine running.
If this sounds familiar it’s because this is a common problem amongst channels but Fleet, Hampshire-based Support To Win has a portfolio of flexible solutions that can ease these reseller pain points.
Support to Win CEO, Julie Mills, says her company, which provides a national service, has a big part to play in helping resellers and their customers.
“Even large resellers have these resource issues, but we can take over the entire provisioning processes once orders are taken. All of our services are modular and available with white label options and include installations and user training for organisations of any size up to large enterprises.
Examples of our migration services, where huge amounts of customer data needs to be gathered, often covering a large geographical area, include 30,000 endpoint migrations from a BroadSoft to an Asterisk platform spread over 6,500 end user customers – a huge task for any organisation that needs attention to detail at scale.
Network consolidations carried out by resellers can also throw up large scale complex issues for resellers. An example here would be a reseller that has secured an order with an organisation to rationalise down from say 15 different ISPs to a single supplier.”
“Again, there is a huge amount of data to gather and co-ordinate to ensure a successful migration project and arrive at a positive outcome for the end user”
New complexities, new solutions
Mills says that user migrations have taken on a new complexity in recent months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Migrations would normally be carried out in some part on customer sites but COVID-19 has meant we have had to develop new strategies. In essence, migrations comprise many elements but as we know, some cannot be carried out due to being unable to visit sites. However, the first part, and some would say the most important, is gathering all the user data.
We have all seen during this period that many resellers and vendors have been offering end user incentives to take their products, frequently in the form of free extended trials. Having the user data gathering completed means that channels are fully prepared for when some form of normality returns.
The key objective here for channels is to convert these free trial users in to fully paying clients so having all the required data prepared means that channels can hit the streets running with their customers and where choke points may arise for technical resources then Support To Win can relieve that pressure.”
Mills is excited about a new service that Support To Win is now offering her clients.
“Data discovery is time consuming – there can be many different stakeholders, so, we are pleased to announce a new automatic data discovery facility for the SME that had previously only been available for migrations of a significant size. Our customers have been going through enough disruption to their businesses which has resulted in many delaying migrations and putting them on hold.”
“This is a zero-touch process for clients which will also show utilisations for all of their different connectivity being used”
Mills concludes, “Customer support is a key element in the client acquisition process but sitting below the current COVID-19 problems a lot of competition still exists in the market. Channels need to convert any of these free services they have offered into real orders and come out the other side of the pandemic in good shape.”
