Interview with Phil Hill, President, Vocalocity
Your focus seems too narrow. Why only micro enterprise?
When we launched the product in 2005, we made a conscious choice to focus on the micro enterprises. There are 5 million businesses in the US and nearly 90% of those businesses have under 20 employees. That is the segment we target. That segment has traditionally been underserved mainly because the ROI to serve those companies does not fit the traditional telco distribution model.
Why do you think the micro enterprise market is not a lucrative business for telcos? At worst the telcos could treat them as residential or SOHO customers?
They could and maybe one day they will. But servicing a business is not like servicing a consumer. They need a business grade product and support. Most big telcos do not know how to reach these businesses in the first place.
How do you reach these businesses yourself?
We reach them through web marketing campaigns. The ROI was not there when Internet advertising was based on banners. The pay-per-click advertising model has helped a great deal in getting the sales leads. And our background is an Internet company so we are very good at targeting prospects online.
Is the Internet the main marketing medium for you?
That is the only marketing medium for us. We close the sale on the phone. That is the only thing we do on phone.
But you must still have to make onsite calls just like the telcos do.
In our case there is never a need for onsite call. The customer brings in their own IP link and we connect their IP Phones over the web interface.
How do you price your service?
$40 per phone per month with unlimited inbound and US outbound minutes.
What is your USP for micro enterprises?
Our phone system is as easy to setup as an email account. We have streamlined feature setup and we have a very clean UI. It really is designed for the micro enterprise segment of offices under 20 people.
But a lot of these micro enterprises do not even have PBX systems. So how do you sell them your package?
Yes, so the first stage for them would be to migrate them over to a PBX which brings in huge benefits. Our offering basically enables PBX features without the expense of buying a PBX. So this is an ideal way to migrate them over to PBX type environment.
You offer equipment as well as the service to the micro enterprise.
We have our own in-house feature server, the hosted PBX platform. The customer brings in his own pipe and IP Phones. We also manage off-net traffic for them.
How many IP Phones do you serve across your customer base?
We are at around 10,000 users right now.
