The Benefits of Self-Service Telecom Models

Posted on February 9, 2022

Intuitive. On-demand. Personalized. These descriptors are being used more and more to illustrate “the ideal customer experience (CX).” And a growing number of organizations are turning to their enterprise technologies and communication offerings to facilitate these cohesive environments.

Increasingly, customers prefer to solve or troubleshoot problems themselves instead of turning to or waiting for customer service agents. As a result, organizations are offering self-service tools and channels to give customers control, personalization, and on-demand experiences that they crave. A self-service tool can be a feature that lets customers quickly and directly access information or answers they seek that are traditionally handled by customer service agents. Organizations that offer self-service solutions empower customers to take control of their IT resources.

The self-service model is gaining traction in the enterprise collaboration and telephony market as organizations require specialized communication preferences and customers demand solutions that address their particular needs.

Flowroute’s cloud-based, self-service portal allows customers direct access to and control over their telephony resources. This self-service model also enables Flowroute customers to bring their own carrier to power communications on their existing tools such as collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams (Teams), which is critical in the new era of hybrid work. In addition, Flowroute’s self-service model is pay-as-you-go, which gives customers more control over their telecom spend, enabling them to be more strategic and proactive on how they spend their IT budget.

Putting customers in the driver’s seat of their communications journey has been a critical pillar of Flowroute’s business model from the start. As business needs evolve to support remote and hybrid employees, scalable and flexible cloud communication services provide teams the solutions to fit their ever-changing business goals and needs. Customer success and product development teams evolve alongside customers to meet changing preferences and deliver modern communication technologies.

Below are key ways Flowroute puts self-service offerings into their customer’s hands.

On-demand provisioning

A key benefit of Flowroute’s self-service model is that our customers can provision their phone numbers quickly and directly within the Flowroute portal. There isn’t a long wait period, and they do not need to wait on a support team member to jump in. Instead, Our customers have the ability to go to their Flowroute Manage portal, customize the options they want (e.g., text-enabled, international, toll-free, etc.), and assign those services to employees and customers within their account. The ability to provision numbers on the fly allows businesses to scale their telecom usage up or down as needs change.

Seamless integration with Teams

In spring 2021, Flowroute announced the release of the “Teams Connector,” a Bring-Your-Own-Carrier (BYOC) calling solution for Teams. We designed the BYOC solution to empower customers to choose any communications provider, rather than carriers only approved by Microsoft, to power calling on the app. Teams Connector is a self-service offering that provides customers flexibility and business continuity. Customers also reduce costs associated with Teams calling through Flowroute’s flexible and a la carte pricing model.

Reduce costs by avoiding unnecessary bundled services

Many of our competitors bundle their communication services. This locks customers into a predetermined selection of telecom services without the ability to pick and choose individual offerings that best meet their needs. In contrast, Flowroute’s “pay-as-you-go” structure fosters a self-serve approach where our customers can configure services to best align with their preferences. This model also helps businesses save money by avoiding subscription costs and charges from unused services.

White glove approach to customer service

We are proud of our customer service and how it differentiates us from other communication service providers. By centering our focus around meeting customer needs, we provide a flexible and tailored approach to communications instead of taking a clunky one-size-fits-all method. As a result, Flowroute has been recognized as the number one SIP trunk provider in customer satisfaction by Eastern Management Group for the past three out of four years.

In today’s fast-paced, hybrid business ecosystem, communication preferences constantly shift and evolve. Carriers need to be able to move and adapt to accommodate modern businesses’ and customers’ needs. Self-service, cloud-based solutions help companies create customer-centric experiences. And our self-service approach delivers ROI upfront to our customers. With Flowroute, you can take back control of your communications strategy and see the benefits firsthand.