Every day I talk with customers that want to lower their monthly telecom bill. Trust me when I tell you that I completely understand what they are trying to accomplish. The boss has come to the department head and instructed them to cut costs so that is what they are going to do. The obvious situation occurs. They start looking for new voice and data services to replace what they currently have and the evaluation criteria are simple. Who can give me the lowest priced circuit? I had a situation recently that fit this scenario to a tee.
The customer is a commercial real estate company with 6 locations. They asked us to quote on their voice services at each location. After a complete audit of their services, we were able to save them about 19% over what they were currently paying. It is certainly not the best we have ever done but it’s still a pretty good savings. We quoted them 6 flat rate PRI circuits from Verizon for a nice rate of $399.00 per circuit. I was expecting the contact to call me and ask when they could make the switch. When I called her back, she told me that they had gone with a local CLEC and it was simply due to the price of $349.00 per T1. She was very appreciative of my help and told me that if it wasn’t for the $50 difference then the business was mine. I later learned that her tunnel vision of bottom line price only turned out to cause a lot of problems. As it turns out, that $349.00 PRI was a measured service T1 and they will now have to pay for every call regardless if its long distance or local. They got their first bill and it was 8% higher than what they were paying before. We all want to save money but don’t let that give you price tunnel vision.
