Can You Still Market Voice to SMBs?

The economic downturn has some predicting that small- and medium-sized businesses will join consumers in a mass cord-cutting and begin relying exclusively on wireless phones. But IntelePeer, best known for offering a hosted, on-demand peering infrastructure for voice traffic exchange between voice over IP and legacy TDM networks, has added an open-application platform to its peering network and telecom service offerings to enable advanced voice services, particularly for the SMB market.

“In a down economy where there is a need to operate much more cost-effectively, small businesses are turning more to Web 2.0 applications,” said John Hart, senior vice president of business development and marketing for IntelePeer. What IntelePeer is doing through its Appworx Open Communications Platform is adding voice enablement to those enterprise apps so that its service provider customers can offer SMBs a richer, more productive service offering, Hart said. And because the service is hosted, SMBs participate without having to invest in telecom and conferencing gear, he added. “Adding voice enablement gives them a competitive edge,” Hart said.

IntelePeer already works with global carriers and service providers via a global peering infrastructure the company built out over the past five years, which carried more than 7 billion voice minutes in 2008. Hart believes service providers can compete more effectively against the Googles and Skypes of the world by marketing voice enhancement services that will enable SMB customers to market their own products more effectively.

“Look at what the largest customer relationship management companies are doing; they are offering on-demand call center services,” Hart said. “But if you put the services side by side, there is not a lot in terms of competitive differences. If I can add voice conferencing, [short message service ] blasting or automated conferencing without changing that system, I now can sell new services to my customers and see a revenue growth not only from installed bases, but from new customers because this gives me a competitive edge when someone is changing their system out.”

The voice enhancements can be used to automate outgoing voice or data messages so that a salesperson can make 25 calls to update customers about price changes with the push of a button and even “stratify those incoming calls when they get back to me based on performance rankings,” Hart said.

“If I'm a wireline operator, I can go to Domino's and white-label our service to them and show them how to use a voice blast or SMS blast to drum up business on a slow day,” he said. “They know who their regular callers are, so on a slow Tuesday night, they can reverse the calls and call out to their customers and offer a discount and immediate delivery. They do that in a voice blast or an SMS blast. If I get the call — ‘Hey John, we have a special tonight on your favorite pizza’ — I can reply by clicking 1, and they'll deliver my pizza at the time I tell them. Any retailer where consumers can opt in to a system like this can use it: a car dealer, a gas dealer, a store. We are bringing the voice business back. People like to talk.”

What makes IntelePeer unique in this space is the combination of the network, the ENUM databases and the applications, said Jeff Ogle, analyst with Current Analysis. “What they are doing is bundling and providing more from a single source than most vendors would offer,” he said. “They will be more of a one-stop shop, which removes a lot of hassle for the end user.” The value proposition for the SMB customer is removing the need for IT personnel in order to get advanced services. “The [small-office, home-office] and SMB markets fit this profile,” he added.