Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with Whaleback Systems of Portsmouth, NH; I talked with Karil Reibold, CEO, Wray West, CTO and Angela Boudreau, Channel Manager. Whaleback guarantees full end-to-end support. Whether customer problems are in a handset, LAN, remote office, in the access or public network; they claim that they can see it and fix it. In many cases they can identify and resolve problems before customer's services are impacted--right down to the bothersome cord un-tanglers that will send many off on the wrong path attempting to troubleshoot and resolve the problem they believe must be elsewhere.
Whaleback is unlike many retail voice over the web companies, offering no or few capabilities that drill into the customer premises.
Whaleback was founded in 2004, targeting the 20-500 station SMB/E. They currently support over 600 customers with about 15,000 endpoints. Whaleback is also E-Rate certified, which allows them to target schools. CrystalBlue Managed Business Communication Services is their branded offering that includes voice, messaging, conferencing and contact center services. (see slide below) Their churn rate is less than .005% per month, they’ve enjoyed 18+ consecutive quarters of growth with EBITDA trending positive, $6.5M annualized recurring revenue and $13M in contract backlog.
In March, 2010, Mosquito Creek Outdoors, based in Apopka, Florida abandoned their Cisco solution and moved onto Whaleback Systems. According to Paul Faircloth, Owner of Mosquito Creek, "The company lost an average of $20,000 a day when the phone system was down, including irreparable damage to customer relations and reputation, which are priceless." But system outages and loss of revenue weren’t the only reasons for getting off their leased Cisco solution. "We were spending around $865 a month just on the service retainer, and every time someone came out, that number went even higher. And the promised 24/7 service was not immediate, with lots of waiting. The bottom line was that the service wasn’t reliable or cost-effective."
This entire experience is the poster child of voice gone wrong. Overly complex, unsustainable, unreliable and embedded. IT companies cannot sell voice with the expectancy of billable hours and retain customers. The voice model doesn’t lend itself to vendors cashing in on customers just to rack up billable hours. Voice solutions must work, consistently and reliably. When I listened to Wray explain to me how Whaleback supports their customers' assets, I knew I had to get more information.
In past VoiceCon shows we had Troubleshooting sessions. I recall in one session asking presenters warm up questions and giving them "user reported symptoms" and asking for their replies. There was no wrong answer. The lesson was, new entrants supporting voice must know both old world and new world telephony.
Paul Faircloth of Mosquito Creek stated other reasons in a press release:
"Our employees are now able to route calls to multiple groups with the flexibility to answer customer calls from any station. It is a key productivity enhancer for retailers." "We leave the management and monitoring to the experts at Whaleback for all our day-to-day needs, and we have found they immediately fix problems. Issues are transparent to us." "Whaleback's service has worked flawlessly for our business. Our system has not been down once," said Faircloth. "We now have peace of mind and are saving 6-8 man hours a month that we used to have to track down system issues." "Whaleback has put VoIP at a very affordable level for us once again, delivering voice services that are reliable, come with great service and cost less. We didn't want to be in the phone business, we just wanted it to work, and finally that is what we’ve got."
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These reasons are all customer key responses for many voice solutions. Understanding the customer, their needs and what makes them stick around are key. This is where it gets interesting with Whaleback.
Of course I wanted to know more about how they were supporting their customers and avoiding truck rolls from New Hampshire to Florida. When the truck does roll, it's their partners. This is the practical solution for hosted voice providers. Many of the retailers are without partners with sufficient capabilities to support customers locally. Local support remains an issue and an important one in the SMB space. So what does Whaleback do to support their customers and retain them?
Have a look below.
Whaleback Systems built a solution with extensive troubleshooting and support tools in place. But they didn't stop with the basics. Whether it was instinct or self preservation, Whaleback implemented a proactive system to continuously test and monitor their network and customer assets. Their network solution includes redundancy and failover and they are using Sonus as their session border controller (SBC). I also detected a hint of standardization with their choice of Polycom, although they are also using snom and ATA devices. Standardization is important for large enterprise to consider in new acquisitions. Remember these endpoints are assets, and it's easier to move them around and support them when you have many of the same devices and from fewer manufacturers. It will also make a difference in service restoration.
The last tidbit that adds to Whaleback's differentiation over most cloud vendors is that the customer has a provided server on premise. While this can arguably be a liability, I think of it as an appliance with a key purpose. Having the on-prem server reduces traffic on the cloud by keeping local Intercom traffic out of the cloud. Star2Star Communications, based in Sarasota, FL does the same thing, using their own appliance to keep local traffic out of the cloud.
Whaleback has notable differentiators and unlike cloud retailers humping to get subscribers to keep up with their standard 3% monthly churn rates, I think Whaleback will be enjoying a smoother ride in revenue goals. We’ve had numerous discussions about customer churn in the hosted space internally and I can tell you that I do think most Interconnects would agree, 3% churn just isn’t acceptable let alone fathomable.
