New
"Best of TA" Content
Introduced New Lists of Best Practices and Vendors
published every week
These content lists are permanent & subject to continual revision based on
the testimony & experience of TA's 3,500 members so tell us what you think!
Email your input to
Dan@TelecomAssociation.com or record it at 951-200-4144.
Answers below appear in reverse order with the newest
answers on top. Got something to add? Call 951-200-4144 to leave an
audio answer and then email your LinkedIn page to
Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.
Next week's "Best Sales & Marketing Practices" question:
Is email marketing an effective marketing tool to sell network services to
business end-users?
Call 951-200-4144 to share an answer then email your LinkedIn page to Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.
While the following list is subject to change, following are the "Best
Toll Free RespOrgs" a business owner can select to make sure their TFN
works correctly all the time. This list is based on TA member
recommendations and/or end-user customer testimonials as well as TA staff
research. Submit content upgrades to Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.
#1 -
TMC's "Be Your Own RespOrg" Service
TMC's
"Be Your Own RespOrg" ("BYOR") service provides a unique opportunity
for business customers with larger inbound call centers or multiple TFNs
to have direct control of all the routing options to effect immediate
change when needed. It's the ultimate disaster recovery solution.
Normally, when a TFN customer orders a change to a TFN they must call their
provider or independent RespOrg and then wait hours or days for the ordered
change to take effect.
With TMC's BYOR
service, the TFN customer simply goes online to the SMS/800 database and
makes the change themselves and eliminates having to waiting for their carrier
or independent RespOrg to make the change.
TMC Sales Engineer Jessica Brown
The only other way for a TFN customer to get this much control is to contact
SMS/800, Inc. and incur the
expenses associated with getting an employee trained so the customer can
become a ResOrg.
While having the toll free service provider also be the toll free RespOrg is
sometimes thought of as a conflict, this is not generally the case with TMC
because once TMC gives their BYOR customers the "RespOrg keys", the customer is
no longer asking TMC to make TFN changes, the customer is making the changes
themselves. TMC provides the customer with the software and training to "Be
their own RespOrg".
Additionally, because TMC is a "reseller" type toll free service provider,
TMC has multiple redundant carrier networks for their TFN customer to
choose from. TMC actively encourages their customers to diversify over
different voice networks to ensure the highest possible "up time" even
when one carrier network has an outage.
TMC has provided its BYOR service to TMC business customers
since 2005. Currently 46 TMC business customers have elected to
"become their own RespOrgs". TMC has 38 employees and is based in Santa
Barbara, California.
To learn more about TMC's BYOR service please contact an authorized TMC
agent. If you're interested in becoming
an authorized TMC
agent so you can provide TMC's BYOR service to your TFN customers
please visit
www.TMCagent.com or call 866-999-1133.
#2 - ATL RespOrg
Services
As possibly the first
independent RespOrg service provider,
ATL Communications ("ATL")
has led the industry by developing and providing sophisticated
multi-carrier toll-free number portability and least cost routing
services.
ATL Communications was founded in 1991 by
Aelea Christofferson (the "Queen of RespOrg") after a successful
career with Pacific Bell. While with Pacific Bell, Aelea served as
representative to the national committee which defined the RespOrg and
developed toll free number portability. Today Aelea consults with
carriers, end users, consultants and the FCC on complex issues concerning
toll free numbers.
ATL reports that
they have almost 300 business customers using ATL's independent RespOrg
services.
ATL customer
testimonials can be viewed at their website and include many phone service
carriers like Comcast and others.
For more information about ATL's independent RespOrg services please visit
ATL's web page or call
them at 800-398-5777.
#3 - OnCall LLC
Originally founded
in 2004, OnCall
is a independent Resporg provider run by Steve Taylor out of Paris, Texas.
Before starting OnCall, Steve was the VP of Operations for
Red River Networks out of Oklahoma.
OnCall
reports having 89 business customers. OnCall provides competitive pricing
for their customers including a $99 setup fee, $25 per month and 15 cents
per number for up to 100 toll free numbers. OnCall's RespOrg ID from SMS/800
is OAK01.
For more information about OnCall's independent RespOrg services please
visit OnCall's
web page or call 800-986-2501 or 800-861-0757 or send an email to
info@resporg.biz.
#4 -
TollFreeNumbers.com
Bill
Quimby of
TollFreeNumbers.com (the "Toll Free King") is not actually trying to
be an independent RespOrg competing against the likes of TMC, ATL or
OnCall but has made himself kind of the independent RespOrg of last resort
for business customers that order a TFN through his
TollFreeNumbers.com service and keep/use
OPEX as the service provider for the TFN.
Since
TMC, ATL and OnCall all charge for their independent RespOrg services and
Bill does not, that makes's Bill service the winner for small TFN
customers who don't really need to do a lot of routing or make changes but
still want to be with an independent RespOrg to "protect
their number" from loss.
TA member testimonials for Bill and
TollFreeNumbers.com come from TA founder
Dan
Baldwin who has used Bill's services for his own business and for his
business customer clients.
For more information about
TollFreeNumbers.com's
services please visit their
website or
call 1-800-MARKETER.
Submit a "Best of TA" idea, upgrade, recommendation or testimonial
Every new list, content piece or change starts with you. Tell us who's doing the best (or
the worst) at anything and we'll make sure we get that information out.
Did we get something wrong or leave something (or someone) out? Tell us
what we need to fix. All TA content is based on out member's experiences
and their customers' testimonials.
Submit list ideals, content upgrades, recommendations or testimonials to:
Dan Baldwin at
Dan@TelecomAssociation.com or 951-251-5155 or call our audio recording
line at 951-200-4144 or send us a video.
Converged Communications Solution Provider seeks Consultative Sales Person
– Northern California Market
Do you love to
peer
deep into prospect organizations and budgets,
visualize
better ways to help their business flow, and
make
convincing presentations of why they can’t afford not to make these
improvements?
If so – we want you on
our team!
Earn substantial
income on both initial Capex and ongoing services (carrier, hosted, and
managed).
Synertel is an
industry-leading 21 year strong convergence organization, based in San
Francisco.
We’re growing right
now, recession or not – and you can be part of our success story. We
offer:
Converged
communications solutions – voice, video, fax, collaboration, & more
Managed
IT services – from backup to hosted Exchange to full monitoring and
proactive remote and onsite support
Carrier
management, auditing, refund assistance, and ongoing telecom expense
management
Structured
cabling
Security
video and access control systems
Specialty
solutions for hospitality, medical, and senior living environments
For prompt
consideration, please email resume tohr@synertel.com.
EOE.
Salt Lake City & Denver - Meet with TA in June the Week of the 22nd
After a two week rest (so we can
produce and publish all the video we've collected) TA is completing its
"West of the Mississippi" Spring road show with a visit to Salt Lake City
and Denver. We'll be in SLC on Monday, June 22nd and then in Denver on the
23rd, 24th & 25th.
"We
were surprised by
the accuracy of TA's prospect list
service. The contact names & phone numbers were over
90% correct -
much better than other lists
we've tried." Brett
Stauffer,
Capital Bandwidth
"Members
Choice" Award Winners With great fanfare and a 21-gun salute, TA announced the winners of TA's
4th annual "Members Choice" Awards. All 3,200 TA members were invited to
cast votes and 322 ballots were accepted and counted. What resulted from
over four months of nominating, voting and counting was the selection of
the Top 10 vendors in 20 fresh industry categories. Click the image below
to view a printable image of all the winners. As previously announced, for
the next year, TA's vendor directory will first list these award winners
in "vote count order" for the directory's 20 industry categories.
About This is Telecom Association's (TA) weekly email newsletter for Complimentary
Members. TA is a 14-year old membership organization. TA members
recommend and distribute telecom, data and technology solutions to
businesses. TA vendors provide many of the solutions TA members recommend.
Members get information about TA vendor solutions through TA vendor
sponsored websites and opt-in TA vendor email blasts.
Golf Tournament for After-School All-Stars