You know there’s value in value added services but it’s been on the backburner for a while.

Don’t worry; you’re absolutely not alone in that category.

Many service providers, especially those coming from the BroadSoft world or now dabbling in the Microsoft world, may be used to selling the core license as their business model. 

You’re a service provider and that’s the service you’ve always provided.

It used to be simple.

However, voice has evolved and moved on.

You must too if you want to stay profitable.

Enabling voice is now viewed as the entry into the world of unified communications and collaboration. It’s like the router that powers your internet. Without it, you can’t do everything else—but there’s a ton more involved to create the best experience possible in your business.

In this guide, we’re going to introduce exactly what value added services are, how they bring you value (as well as your customers), and how to go about adding them to your portfolio.

Let’s define exactly what we mean by value added services:

“In the context of the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and Unified Communications (UC) industry, value-added services refer to additional features or functionalities integrated into core communication platforms to enhance their utility, improve customer experience, and differentiate service offerings. These services go beyond basic voice and data transmission to provide advanced capabilities like real-time call analytics, CRM integration, and smart call recording.”

The most popular value added services are…

With real-time analytics, you can track:

• Call Queues: Monitor calls waiting in queues and their distribution across teams or departments.
• Average Wait Time: Track the average time customers spend waiting in queues.
• Longest Wait Time: Identify the longest duration a caller has waited.
• Call Volumes: Analyze inbound and outbound call volumes by time intervals (daily, hourly, etc.).
• Missed Calls: Track calls that were not answered to reduce missed opportunities.
• Abandoned Calls: Monitor calls where the caller disconnected before being answered.
• Response Times: Measure how quickly calls are answered to ensure service level agreements are met.
• Agent Activity: Track agent statuses (active, idle, or on Do Not Disturb).
• Call Handling Metrics: Average handle time, call durations, call outcomes (e.g., completed, transferred).
• Service Level Tracking: Monitor performance against pre-set SLAs to ensure compliance and efficiency.
• Call Distribution: Analyze how calls are distributed among agents or teams to optimize workloads.
• Peak Call Times: Identify high-demand periods to adjust staffing and resources accordingly.
• Unanswered Call Patterns: Spot trends in unanswered calls to address gaps in service.

When your CRM and calling platform are integrated, the process becomes much smoother:

• Agent clicks the phone number in the CRM
• Call initiates on calling app
• Recent history appears on screen for agents to reference when needed

The same applies when customers call in, too.

Instead of having to ask who’s calling, validate the call, then search records for the right account, right transaction, and associated documents, screen pop gives you all the information you need right at your fingertips.

The overriding themes when introducing CRM integration are fewer clicks, less time per interaction, and fewer chances of duplication and misinformation.

The ability to say “yes we can enable this” without having to invest in contact center software empowers you to introduce an informal contact center.

This may be a single value added service or a combination of them all.

When you have these value added services in your portfolio, you create three welcomed additions to your offering:

1- Additional revenue streams

What’s the cost of acquiring a new customer?

You may not know this off the top of your head but it’s generally sky high. In fact, studies show that the cost of acquiring a new customer can be up to 25x more than retaining an existing one.

So the idea of adding one, two, or three extra revenue streams per customer must be an appealing one. It makes operational sense to you as a service provider and your customers are going to shop around for these services anyway.

The notion of “it might as well be you” is only the beginning. Yes, from a selfish point of view, you want the business. Of course you do.

But it makes total sense for your customers too. If they can have a single provider of VoIP, connectivity, and then complementary services like call recording, analytics, and CRM integration on top of that, there are major benefits for them:

• Single vendor management strategy
• Single source of support
• Discounted pricing for purchasing multiple services

You get additional revenue streams per customer. Customers get a simplified and discounting communications package 🤝

2 – Stickier services

It used to be that the more services you provided a customer with, the harder it was to leave.

Fast forward to the 2020s and we’ve all realized that it’s not quantity over quality and it’s actually rather easy to leave a service provider. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t employ so many salespeople to keep topping up the revenue column.

With services like call recording and analytics, however, these become vital to the way businesses operate. If you provide not just a platform but a total communications package, inclusive of primary data and information like call recordings, transcripts, and value metrics, you’re not just storing sensitive information that is an effort to migrate, you’re also providing a total business communications solution.

Assuming uptime is sufficient and your service supports customers’ ongoing needs, they should want for nothing. The nature of cloud platforms (inclusive of value added services) is that they’re always updating and innovating. If something new becomes trendy or needed, you can bet product development teams are already one step ahead.

Just take real-time analytics for Microsoft Teams, as an example. With tons of Teams admins stating the native Teams call reporting wasn’t enough for fit for purpose, the Akixi team built comprehensive real-time, in-app call reporting.

With services like this in your portfolio, why would customers ever leave?

3 – Ability to form a genuine partnership

When you switch from service provider to customer partner, you build a long lasting relationship that focuses on achieving common goals.

If your customer needs to improve average handle time to retain customers, you can help that by not just implementing technology in your portfolio but by offering support and sharing how other customers have achieved this.

By switching to the mentality that your business success depends on your customers’ success, you work with customers to ensure positive outcomes when adopting, renewing, and revisiting communications technology. 

You can be proactive with this too. If a new feature becomes available, make it the priority of your customer success/account management team to demonstrate that feature. This might be a monthly newsletter of what’s new or a scheduled Teams call or in-person visit.

The long and short of it is quite simple. If you’ve got a portfolio packed full of business-defining technology, helping your customers get the most out of it is beneficial for everyone.

You’ve got two options:

• Buy standalone third-party products from different providers when customers request them
• Use a trusted provider of all these services (Akixi, that’s us 👋)

If you’re opting to resell a single technology as part of your service provider offering, a standalone provider may be just fine. We have a number of MSPs and resellers doing just that.

But the majority who started off this way have now added the full complement of value added services.

Why?

Because they appreciate the value for their business and their customers.

And, sometimes, it’s risk mitigation. If you take call recording today to please a handful of customers, what happens when those customers ask about real time call analytics?

You then start a mad rush to become able to provide this and don’t have a referenceable customer on your books. In all likelihood, you miss out on the analytics sale. What’s more, the sale goes to someone else who provides a VoIP platform and sells a bundle of value added services. Months go by without hearing from your customers then you get notice to cancel the service as they’ve found a new provider that does everything.

It may not come to that, obviously. Many businesses are risk averse to putting all their eggs in one basket. But, as highlighted throughout this guide, there are significant benefits to doing so.

Interested in adding call recording, CRM integration, and call analytics to your portfolio?