My People gives VoIP KISS treatment

For an industry that has proclaimed its end customers don't care about the technology, telecommunications has a long history of taking the simplest service and making it more complex than brain surgery. Voice-over-IP providers, often aiming for consumers with a pure low-cost play, have made great strides toward the '90s political motto “keep it simple, stupid” (KISS) but still sometime get dazzled by the possibilities of their technology.

My people, a Kansas City-based VoIP provider that formed last year, is taking KISS to the next level by stripping away virtually any technical jargon from its marketing. Even more important though, the company has developed a series of applications that virtually anyone can understand but don't always associate with traditional voice service.

Like the vast majority of VoIP providers, my people is using both public Internet and private IP links to manage calls and sends an analog terminal adapter (or in my people parlance, “clever little box”) to users who pick from one of two service plans, dubbed Simple or Simply Unlimited. It's the applications, though, that tend to stand out. Instead of delving into communications management and Web interfaces that allow users access to all kinds of features, my people is focusing on what Sarah Pieri, director of marketing for my people, calls, “life management tools.”

For example, one feature allows users to set up reminder calls for anything from picking up dry cleaning to remembering birthdays.

“We knew we had to come out with something more than dial tone,” said Alan Creighton, president and CEO of my people. “With my people we wanted to come out with something unique.”

The same service can be used to provide wake-up calls that not only greet the user but also provide information such as an audio local weather forecast. Users can even say “snooze” in response to the wake-up call and get another reminder call a few minutes later.

Behind the service, my people has deployed a Sonus switch along with IP Unity's voice mail platform and Nuance's speech recognition application.

“The Nuance platform is really the component that is key to delivering information on demand,” Creighton said. “When you pick up the phone, you hit the Sonus switch and it immediately goes to the Nuance database.”

Of course, the user will know none of this — nor care, Creighton said. “The key is that we take a lot of the technical component out of it.”

Regardless of its simplicity, the company faces an extremely crowded market. At the same time, the approach of using applications to attract customers is still somewhat unique, said William Stofega an analyst with IDC. Noting that Vonage's monthly churn rate is well into the double digits, VoIP providers need to move beyond price-based strategies, he said.

“Vonage is able to play the price game well, but clearly they haven't found the special sauce to make people stick around,” Stofega said.