Typical Guarantee line of Questioning

“May I ask, what is your back-up plan?”

Have you ever been asked this question by a salesperson? I’m asking you now. Don’t look at this as “pushy” sales guy Phil looking to boost his sale. I’m imperfect in a lot of ways, but I’m not pushy. But just answer the question.

Okay forget about me asking this question. What if your manager asks you this question? I know what your first word will be.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh….”

A typical scenario may play out as follows:

PHIL: Well thank you again “Percy” for your order for two phones. Those will ship Fed Ex two-day, and you will receive them Monday. I’ll call you later with the tracking.

PERCY: Thanks Phil, I look forward to hearing from you.

PHIL: Percy, before you go, what is your back-up plan?

PERCY: Back-up plan for what, Phil?

PHIL: For the phones.

PERCY: Oh. Well they’re covered under the manufacturer warranty correct?

PHIL: Yes. There is a one-year limited manufacturer’s warranty covering defects.

PERCY: I’m all set then, PHILIP.

PHIL: Percy, what if the phone breaks, is damaged or fails to work 366 days from now? What if it breaks or is damaged within 365 days? I know the manufacturer is not going to cover you in these cases. You do plan on using these phones a year from tomorrow right?

PERCY: Well I guess I’ll order some new phones.

PHIL: That will work. At $100 each you could spend $200 for the phones on this order and $400 total for two phones to use now and two for back-up to leave in the supplies closet.

PERCY: We cannot be without phones, but $400? I guess I’ll talk to our manager and get approval for a couple more. Thanks Phil.

PHIL: Hold everything Percy! What if I told you for $120 per phone I’ll cover any defect, damage, breakage or failure for three years or 1095 days of coverage? Your cost for a back-up plan drops 40 percent. You’re not spending $400, you’re spending $240. Not to mention it supersedes the manufacturer’s warranty and there are no questions asked, no standing in a call queue waiting for an answer. No time explaining what went wrong. Just call me and make me aware, ship the phone back to me in one or a thousand pieces, and….

PERCY: and….

PHIL: and…POOF! New phone, Percy!

PERCY: Phil, tell me more about the VoIP Supply Warranty.

PHIL: Check this link out Percy, and we’ll go over it together.

I send Percy the link: go3 warranty

Percy signs up for the warranty that day and looks like a hero to his manager.

Call a specialist at VoIP Supply today and find 1001 more reasons to consider the go³ Warranty as a secure and viable back-up plan that will cover all your telephony hardware! Follow us!

Our customers are our most valuable asset, and are a group of people that we strive to impress all day, every day. With more than 57,000 customers since August 2004, growing the company from 5 employees to 65 employees, more than 100,000 shipments and over $65,000,000 in gross VoIP equipment sales, I can safely say that we have had some hurdles to overcome, but have always placed the customer first and done our best to over-deliver.

Over the years there have been a few instances where we just plain got it all wrong. Like any growing business, we have made decisions that started with good intentions but ended up with poor results. Some customers have been nice enough to point out these issues to others; other customers have taken part in our customer satisfaction surveys and brought to light many areas where we can improve. The purpose of this post and others to follow is to highlight some areas of need and our plans to improve.

Returns: One area that has been a thorn in our side (and the side of many retailers) is the handling of product returns. No one likes to have to return a product and most are upset to begin with since the device is not working. Once upon a time our process for returns was slow and inconsistent with poor communication throughout the process. I am happy to say that this has been addressed and has improved, and that we have plans to continue improving the process even further. With dedicated staff, refined returns criteria, additional returns details/options printed on the packing slip and invoice, automated communications with each customer through various stages of the process and transparency, and expectations each customer should have make the end result far more positive.

Since we are not a manufacturer, we are not able to ensure that the products work, only that they can be replaced efficiently, if and when they break. From our experience and customer feedback, one common theme has been not knowing what status of the return is. We now communicate with each customer when a request for a Return Merchandise Authorization has been received, when an RMA number is granted or declined, when an RMA expires, when the return is received in our warehouse, when it has been tested, when the tested return is approved or declined and when the final credit is processed. This entire procedure now has service level assurances included where the testing and processing must be completed within 48 hours, and initial RMA requests are all handled within one business day or sooner.

There are dozens of other customer service projects and initiatives going on; I will detail them in future posts. Most are related to communications in one manner or another. With effective, consistent and proactive communications, our customers are always informed and able to focus on their needs without the distraction of tracking down their products.

Voip Supply hosts day long seminar with Digium

Here at VoIP Supply it’s important that we stay on the cutting edge of voip technology, and we are able to do that by having companies such as Digium come in and conduct day-long training seminars. We can then pass along additional knowledge to our customer base. Chris Langford and Gayle Magee from Digium were here this past Monday bringing everyone up to speed on the the latest Digium offerings.

The Digium presentation covered three main topics: PCI Cards, Digium Appliances and the Switchvox PBX.

A special thanks to Gayle and Chris for coming into town and keeping us up to speed, and thanks for the t-shirts!