Leading cloud communications company, Vonage has extended its business offerings to include support for smaller organisations who want to tap into the full benefits of the unified communications space. Vonage currently supports around 2 million customers globally, and they hope to help smaller brands thrive by giving them access to an easy-to-adopt solution for telecommunications. Every day, Vonage helps over 600,000 business users upgrade their phone strategy.
To learn more about how Vonage is helping small companies to get more out of their communications, we sat down for an exclusive interview with Roger Vigilance, the Marketing Director for Vonage in the UK, responsible for looking after the commercial side of things, as well as marketing and sales.
What’s the Vonage Proposition for the UK Small Business Space?
As an organisation with a goal of communication transformation, Vonage is making a powerful name for themselves across the globe. I was interested to hear more about how Roger and the team in the UK are differentiating themselves.
“In the UK, Vonage is currently on a pivot. We aim to help smaller businesses get started with their own innovative telephone system. That means not only accessing audio connections but also fully-featured UC that’s completely configured to ensure minimal disruption for any company.”
As part of their UC offering, Vonage also delivers 24/7 support to their small business clients. “Our services are built around giving people the communication solutions they need. This means enabling high volumes of calls, providing access to low-cost international calls, and ensuring easier mobility. Because we’re built on the cloud, small companies can start up fast, and ensure that they have everything they need for both today and tomorrow.”
How Would Vonage Define a Small Business?
There’s rarely a one-size-fits-all definition for any small business. According to Vonage, their idea of a small company is anything from 2 seats, up to around 40 seats. Roger told me that the brand splits their customers into two brackets:
“We have the very small business typically under 10 seats who want to get up and running quickly, but don’t have a lot of expertise in IT or telephony. On the other hand, there are also businesses with more than 10 seats, which have established technology and communication tasks. They have more sophisticated requirements for their tech, and a higher need to avoid disruption.”
One of Vonage’s main value points is the fact that the company has made it very easy for smaller organisations to procure new services because everything is based in the cloud. No matter where their customers come from, they feel they can offer the ideal services. “We believe our technology is appropriate for anyone who needs a reliable telephone system.”
How Does Vonage and the Cloud Reduce Complexity for Small Businesses?
As a solution that exists in the cloud, Vonage has tried to make things as simple as possible for their smaller clients. “With a system in the cloud, our customers don’t need to worry about where they’re going to put their telephony system. They can expand as they go, and they don’t need to worry about the logistics of installing something new and complex on-premises.”
In the past, smaller companies were forced to shell out a lot of money for their communication platform, but Vonage hopes to help companies move beyond that initial expense. Roger told me:
“Our commercial model allows customers to get started for almost no up-front cost. We have a standard subscription model available, and a range of phones to choose from. However, our entry-level phone is provided free of charge to customers who just want basic telephony.”
The only thing Vonage charges for up-front is the delivery expenses of the phones. This means that most customers can get started with UC very affordably, and it’s up to them if they want to upgrade to more expensive phone systems. Additionally, Vonage also includes full support for their UC solutions.
“Our customers are very satisfied with the level of support we offer. We aim to address as many issues as possible with the first call, but we can send our customers through to a technical group to handle more complex problems. We know that the interaction of various networks and solutions means that issues are likely to occur. We’re very attentive in making sure that our customers can get up and running in a sustainable way.”
What Trending Demands Has Vonage Seen Lately?
Roger noted that as the world of unified communications becomes more popular for all shapes and sizes of business, the organisation has begun to see an increase in demand for numerous types of conferencing. “We’ve seen demand for call recording, and various call-centre type capabilities. We’re enhancing our products over time to deliver as customer needs become more sophisticated.”
A couple of years ago, smaller companies only really invested in basic PBX capabilities. Now, as a diverse customer experience (CX) becomes more crucial to brand differentiation, businesses of all shapes and sizes are searching for new and improved strategies. Vonage has seen the market for small business support growing, and Roger told me that the company feels that they need more segmentation in their approach – something that they’ll be looking to work more with in the coming year.
“We’ll be offering a broader range of services for different market needs, both in terms of the services we deliver, and the technology placed on those services.”
One of the trends that Vonage has noticed is that in the same way communications and collaborations have begun to converge together, there’s also been a convergence in communications and software to the point were interesting new services can be delivered to the consumer market.
“We consider communication platforms as a service, or /unified-communications/cpaas, as being a very interesting solution for today’s marketplace. That’s something we’re going to be developing more as we move into the future.”
