28-Nov-2010 22:58

Questions to ask before choosing telecom providers

When searching for a new telecom provider, the following is a list of 11 questions that you should ask before you make the final decision.
These questions mainly pertain to working with an agent or reseller or consultant.
Most of them will also apply if you decide to go directly to the carrier.

Pre-Sale
1. What type of experience do you have in the telecom industry and which companies have you worked for?

2. How many quotes am I to expect from your company and which carriers will they be coming from?

3. What kind of fee do you charge and how do you base this cost?

4. What kind of billing increments and surcharges are involved or included in the pricing?

5. What contracts am I tying myself or my company into?

Post-Sale
6. Who handles the account after we sign the contract? Does this go to a provisioning team or project coordinator? Do you stay involved with this process?

7. When there is a service outage whom do we contact?

8. When there are billing issues or credits due, whom do we contact?

9. When our first bill comes in who will go through that with us to make sure we were charged what we were quoted?

10. Do you perform quarterly follow-ups if requested to ensure that we are satisfied with the service?

11. If we have a time-realated contract, at the end of our term what happens? Who will contact us with updated pricing and terms?

Things to pay attention to:
Does the sales representative take the time to understand your business, or is he just selling you something?

The importance of understanding your business is vital to offering you the correct telecom services.

A simple example of this is call patterns for long distance calls.
A carrier can offer a great rate for local or national calls, but if a majority of the calls are International, this doesn’t help lower your overall bill.

Again, a very simple example, but understanding how your business operates really helps us offer you the proper services that will enable your telecom systems to run more efficiently.

For full answers, contact us Free on 0800 619 2626 today…