A Grave Concern: Compelling Your Customers

Surveys over the past few months have indicated that the consumer at large is completely unfamiliar with the term “VoIP.” This is mentioned with grave concern and is frequently followed by opinions that the telecommunications industry must do more to familiarize customers with the technology, and why they should want to switch. Obviously, the telecommunications marketing groups learned nothing from the failed exercise of trying to sell ISDN. Those marketing people moved on to try to teach consumers that DSL means high speed access, instead of just pitching the benefits of…high speed access. Why do we still try to sell technology instead of selling benefits? When did this complete misunderstanding of customer needs, wants and interests begin?

In the past, the pace of change was controlled solely by the monopoly carriers. Customers were not told about the change from step-by-step switches to electromechanical switching. Nor were they told about the implementation of digital switching. They were offered new features and functions, and new pricing packages to use them, but never was there a mention of the “innards” that made these features possible.

And that suited (and suits) most consumers just fine. Consumers (that includes you and me, don’t forget) make choices based on individual perception of value. Do I want this? What will it do for me? Can I afford it? Can I afford not to have it? These and similar questions are the ones we ask ourselves everyday, whether we are looking at cars, televisions or shirts.

At the same moment in history when companies are investing heavily in Business Intelligence systems and worrying about “mass customization,” service providers are failing to reap the benefits of these concepts for lack of basic marketing work. Teach customers about VoIP? Bah Humbug! How many consumers are familiar with the term “TDM”? My wager would be that the number of customers who recognize “TDM” is far smaller than the fraction that recognizes “VoIP.” Surely today’s marketers don’t really think that consumers are sitting around wondering if today is the day that they should change from TDM to VoIP. A much more important, and apparently overlooked fact in this survey is that the same majority of respondents who didn’t recognize “VoIP” also indicated that they are happy with their current telephone service and see no compelling reason to change (to VoIP, or anything else). That’s what we as industry specialist must convey to our customers – compelling reasons to change – not a tutorial on VoIP.

Consumers don’t realize that billions of calling minutes are already handled using VoIP-enabled backbone networks, nor should they have to think about this. Consumers don’t need to know that those sleek new phones on their desks are IP-enabled. They do need to know about the nifty new features they can use, like setting up caller lists that let them choose which callers they want to talk with immediately and which should go directly to voicemail. They do need to know that there are some special procedures to follow for setting up 911 service (and don’t forget to advertise the benefit of being able to decide if you want the authorities to know exactly where you are…).

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