PBX platforms have come full circle, and everyone knows it. Declining premises PBX sales – in 2017, 2018, and now 2019 -- rewind us more than a half-century to 1961, to the age of the Corvair Monza and the Plymouth Fury. We are looking back on something that today shares Centrex DNA, a first hosted PBX platform that once siphoned-off premises PBX sales. Well, to be fair, hosted PBXs are still siphoning off premises PBX sales, but at a faster rate, with superior technology, and better selling to attract new customers.
Today, it’s Centrex redux; and the 2019 muscle car is the hosted PBX. The best hosted PBX, according to Eastern Management Group’s customer satisfaction research is RingCentral. RingCentral is in the catbird seat in a massive hosted PBX market that
according to our research accounts for 18% of all PBX sales.
Eastern Management Group recently performed a PBX customer satisfaction study, collecting data from thousands of customers who judged their PBX provider on 10 separate customer satisfaction measurements (see table below). While the study and report -- “
2018 Premises and Hosted PBX Customer Satisfaction” -- present numerical data on the 16 hosted PBX and premises PBX providers, today I will address RingCentral, the 2018 hosted PBX customer satisfaction winner.
Who RingCentral Is and Why Customers Love It
Eastern Management Group has long analyzed RingCentral. It’s not a fast-growing run-and-gun hosted PBX provider – although the industry has no shortage of fast-break providers. Rather, RingCentral is a fast-growing pragmatic vendor that knows its market. By concentrating on mobile and basic PBX feature packages, RingCentral offers just what the customers expect. In our study, RingCentral ranks second out of 16 PBX companies for the “Technology and Product” category, and first in this category among the cloud providers.
RingCentral is a well-managed enterprise. Most recent financials show a 77% gross profit. Research and development accounts for 15% of revenue, which places RingCentral at the high end of all PBX companies. That’s where we believe RingCentral should remain, given the industry’s competitive nature. In all four 2018 quarters, RingCentral beat analysts’ consensus earnings per share (EPS).
RingCentral has a hosted PBX industry benchmark pricing model – not too low and not too high. Eastern Management Group’s Monitor pricing tool shows a RingCentral seat license at $26.88 per month for a basic features package covering eight employees. RingCentral prices are, for the model presented here, properly situated between competitors like Comcast and West.
RingCentral: No. 1 in Management Tools and More
Eastern Management Group’s “2018 Premises and Hosted PBX Customer Satisfaction” survey pitted RingCentral against all the major PBX vendors in 10 customer satisfaction measurements; the company led all hosted PBX providers. RingCentral ranked first in multiple measurements, including Management Tools, ideal for IT managers. It placed in the top three providers in four of the ten customer satisfaction measurements. RingCentral also had a high net promoter score (NPS) for the “Recommend to a Friend” category.
While RingCentral faces a lot of competition, the company has a good business model, and the results speak for themselves. As a hosted PBX company, RingCentral has an exceptional financial track record, and now substantial accolades from customers in Eastern Management Group’s 2018 study.
