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TA's TelecomAgent News - Publications Spring 2006 Survey & Members Choice Awards back to Publications Home back to TelecomAgent News Home
TelecomAssociation's Spring 2006 Survey & Members Choice Awards Executive Summary The survey Internet link was emailed to all 2,300 TelecomAssociation members subscribed to TelecomAgent News (TAN); 123 responded during the last week of February 2006.
XO Communications received the broadest overall honor in our Members Choice Awards winning the Members Choice in the data/network services category and placing in the Top 5 in both the carrier/reseller and local dial tone/VoIP categories . NewEdge Networks and Covad also received special honors by placing in the Top 5 in both the local dial tone/VoIP and data/network services categories. The biggest winners though are TelecomAssociation members. Your support of TelecomAssociation and participation in the Spring 2006 survey has enabled your collective voice to be heard by those vendors trying to best learn how to serve you. Thanks for your energy and efforts. Look for the Summer 2006 survey in June with the results to be published in July. If you have specific recommendations on how the Summer 2006 survey and Members Choice Awards can be improved over our Spring 2006 results, please contact Dan Baldwin at 951-245-6877 or Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.
Members Choice, Top 5 & Top 10 Award Winners - Spring 2006 It took a great deal of time to sort out our Members Choice Awards as we had to double check to make sure the voter cast were from real real agents and to give proper weightings to higher volume agents and those agent nominations accompanied with detailed testimonials. Members Choice designation goes to the overall category winner. Top 5 and Top 10 designations go to category nominees with significant member votes . Congratulations to all vendors nominated! Master Agent Members Choice - Telecom Brokerage, Inc. Master Agent Top Five - KeaneTel, Wholesale Carrier Services, MicroCorp & SOVA Master Agent Top Ten - Telesis Management, CMS, Cognigen, WTG, Intelisys Master Agent Honor Roll - Gryphone, TeleSource, ATN, X4, Venicom, Telarus, Venture Group, ICC, BlueFront
Carrier/Reseller Members Choice - AireSpring Carrier/Reseller Top Five - XO Communications, TouchTone, TelePacific, OPEX Carrier/Reseller Top Ten - CIMCO, GroveLine, TMC, AccessOne, TNCI Carrier/Reseller Honor Roll - InfoHighway, Primus, UCN, Line Systems, nii, Paetec, Global Crossing, CTC, Covista, ATI, AIT, Andiamo
Local Dial Tone/VoIP Members Choice - NewEdge Networks Local Dial Tone/VoIP Top Five - XO Communications, TelePacific, Covad, InfoHighway Local Dial Tone/VoIP Top Ten - ECI, Smoothstone, GroveLine, nii, Mettel Local Dial Tone/VoIP Honor Roll - AireSpring, TMC, US Lec, Covista, WorldVoIP
Data/Network Members Choice - XO Communications Data/Network Top Five - New Edge, American Telesis, Covad, BBCOM Data/Network Top Ten - TMC, AireSpring, ACC, Broadwing, Shop4T1 Data/Network Honor Roll - Primus, Savvis, Verizon, Covista, Global Crossing
Conferencing Members Choice - Conference Group Conferencing Top Five - A+ Conferencing, Cognigen, Raindance, Kall8 Conferencing Top Ten - VOX Conferencing
Enhanced Services Members Choice - RPM Software Enhanced Services Top Five - Cognigen, TelCan, Kall8, BrontoMail Enhanced Services Top Ten - InsideSales, SalesGenie, InstantAudio/Video, SMBdomains, RedBugg
Following are the specific Spring 2006 survey questions and the answer summaries.
Agent Agreement & Dispute Resolution (Questions 1 - 4) Agents take their agreements pretty seriously with 74% or respondents saying they always read every word and 71% saying they have an attorney review it at least sometime. As well, it seems almost half of our survey respondents ask for and get changes to the agent agreements they are first presented. When agreement disputes arise, over 85% of the respondents were able to resolve at least some of their disputes and the resolution tactic chosen 60% of the time was simply submitting a documented list of discrepancies. About a third of the resolved disputes needed a new agreement signed, arbitration or threatened lawsuit.
Customer & Agent Motivators? (Questions 5 - 7) When it comes to looking for a program to make their customers happy agents first and foremost look for accurate & detailed billing. Assuming the customer is billed correctly, agents then looked for telecom vendors that offered their customers direct support, the best product mix and then quality of service. Surprisingly, least important was a "name brand" company. Also not as important as other customer benefits was the waiver of setup fees or a short contract term. When agents turn to their own motivators though, long-term residual commissions matter the most by a wide margin. Low or no quotas came in second. Second to last and last in importance were agent equity programs and incentive programs like vacation trips. When it comes to non-monetary program attributes, agents first look for online agent reports. Last on the non-money wish list is a program specifically geared for new agents.
Attitudes About Master Agency (Questions 8 - 11) Over 60% of respondents sold through master agents but over 70% indicated they prefer to work directly through carriers or resellers. As to the reasons for preferring to work direct with the service providers, while some agents indicated it was to reduce the chance of not getting paid properly, the majority of the agents indicated their desire to go direct stemmed from an attitude that master agents hinder rather than help when it comes to quickly resolving customer problems or provisioning issues. Click down to question 10 to view all the varied responses yourself. This clearly seems to be a wakeup call to master agents: To attract more subagents you need to evidence that you help get customer problems solved faster and that accessing the provider the master agent is at least transparent when it comes to accessing the provider's systems to quickly solve a customer problem. KeaneTel and MicroCorp were the most well known of TelecomAssociation's master agent vendor members.
Carrier/Reseller Opinions (Questions 13 - 15) Not surprisingly, 90% of respondents sold directly with carriers or resellers. As far as which TelecomAssociation vendors they're most familiar with, XO was first in familiarity followed by AireSpring, Primus, AccessOne & OPEX.
Conference Calling Attitudes (Questions 16 - 20) Surprisingly, only 63% of respondents reported that they currently sell conference calling services. Of those that were selling conferencing, audio conferencing was by far the best seller and the Conference Group is the conferencing TA vendor member respondents were most familiar with followed by Cognigen and A+ Conferencing.
Local, VoIP, RBOC & CLEC (Questions 21 - 25) Over 88% of respondents sold local dial tone of one flavor or another. What was surprising is that of the dial tone being sold, CLEC services were being sold most and VoIP services were being sold least even behind RBOC UNE & resale. As for TA vendor recognition, XO, Covad and NewEdge Networks were best known followed by InfoHighway, TelePacific and ECI.
Data/Network Service Attitudes (Questions 26 - 30) Over 90% of agents reported selling data and network service products. Dedicated Internet services were the most popular product sold followed closely by T-1/T-3 and then private line, managed services and network design. Least sold were frame relay and ATM services. XO, Covad and NewEdge Networks were the data network companies the agents were most familiar with followed by Primus, American Telesis and BBCOM.
Enhanced Services Attitudes (Questions 31 - 35) Only 35% of respondents reported selling enhanced services which was quite a surprise. Of the enhanced services being sold the top sellers were special 800 services followed by special telecom software and domain service. Of TA's enhanced services vendors RPM Software and Cognigen were the two vendors mostly recognized.
Recommended Vendors To Avoid (Questions 36 & 37) Fully 46% of respondents would recommend that agents steer clear of one specific vendor or another. In naming specific vendors to avoid, many respondents went into lengthy diatribes. Fortunately no specific vendor was consistently singled out to make them worthy of public shame. The "bad apple" vendor list will be held confidentially by TA though and any TA member with a "need to know" can feel free to contact Dan Baldwin at Dan@TelecomAssociation.com to see if a vendor they are considering doing business with is on the bad apple list.
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