Vendor promises are a great thing. The highly-skilled salesperson knows all the right language, understands your challenges, and hits just the right price point for you to sign on the dotted line. You feel all warm and fuzzy about the fact that you’ve streamlined devices and applications to create a unified communications environment. Your team now has flexibility, anytime and anywhere access, and scalability previously reserved for large enterprises. You’ve also shifted costs from significant capital investments to manage operating expenses. It feels like a giant win for your organization until the first bill arrives. The dreamy haze drops away and you realize you just invested in something that is not what it seems.
Billing is a dilemma most businesses run into. Some businesses fail to look after the terms and conditions of a payment plan. Overlooking that piece of information could affect your costs big time. Understanding the details are important to get you out of trouble. Being nitpicky is the only way to confirm what they claim.
Unified communications deliver tremendous benefits and functionalities your business likely didn’t have with its traditional phone system. There are important variables that often lead to complicated and higher-than-expected bills. You can exercise due diligence before you ever enter an agreement and hold your vendor to their promises.
Here’s a little insight into what you should expect from your unified communications vendor to include:
You need to know how to send payment, but also who to contact when you have questions. Vendors offer support for their users to generate positive word-of-mouth. They often have customer support agents a user can reach out to when concerns or issues arise. If there are lumps on your billing statement, raise it to a designated agent and they will clear it out for you right away. Utilizing customer support will help you gather crisp and clear information about your account.
Logging in your service plan, payment method, and due dates prevent extra charges from happening. Sometimes users are charged for unused services. Keeping a log of all your statement information helps you to navigate back quickly about important information. Looking into the activities within the platform will save you from financial headaches.
There should be a detailed explanation of activities within the platform. Vendors provide this to match usage and billing statements. You need to take advantage of this data to spot whether there’s an impairment between the expense report and application usage. Feel free to ask for clarifications or extra details. These fees can add up quickly.
Messages from the vendor are often neglected. It sits in the inbox of the recipient and is left unopened. Some of these messages contain updates on the service or outages. The purpose of these messages is to inform you and prepare for the upcoming changes. Your subscription plan can also be the main topic here. Vendors remind their users when their service plan is expiring. Watch out for this to suppress any work interruptions.
Take note of this information so you don’t get trapped in services with shady selling propositions. These tips will help you get the transparency and service you need. Remember to stay vigilant and educated when choosing your service provider.
BlackPoint IT Services can help you in this process. We’ve been delivering voice services to businesses since before VoIP or UCaaS were options. Our team of experienced professionals can help you understand the options and pick the right service for your business. Crazy good service is our commitment and what we’ve been delivering for over 40 years.
