Rogers is trying to help Canadian small businesses look more like their larger counterparts with a mobile service that includes auto attendants, sophisticated call routing and the ability to port their office numbers to smartphones.
The service, called Rogers Unison, will eventually be offered to large enterprise and government sector clients later this year but the initial launch is aimed specifically at companies of between one and 29 people. The company (which also owns Marketing and MarketingMag.ca), says it will mean small businesses can cut their desk phone cords and save up to 40%, or between $300-$600 a year per landline.
Rogers Unison is based on BroadSoft, a unified communications and collaboration (UCC) suite that is hosted in the cloud versus a more traditional on-premises application. That means software doesn’t have to be installed locally and customers can be brought on board more quickly. Rogers Unison will be available to customers who have a Rogers Share Everything for business plan.
Other telecom providers, including Allstream (now Zayo) have dabbled with selling cloud-based UCC to small businesses in the past, but have tended to stick with larger organizations.
Matthew Leppanen, Rogers’ general manager of unified communications, said the company will be using a variety of tactics to reach potential customers, but one of the most powerful may be experiential: Rogers created more than 70 business-to-business (B2B) centres in its retail environments, where small businesses can book an appointment to meet with reps around their specific needs.
“They don’t have to wait in line and talk to someone who doesn’t know business,” he said, adding that Rogers will be also doing a significant amount of online marketing, as well as influencers who can participate in conversations about pain points rather than Unison itself. “A big part is leveraging social, because we know small businesses are savvy about social.”
Leppanen admitted that the launch of Unison may take some Canadians by surprise, in part because Rogers is the first North American carrier to offer it and also because it comes from an organization they may think of as a traditional phone company.
“We’re definitely leading with notion of cutting the cord, but not losing your (desk phone) numbers,” he said.
Besides reducing landline costs, Rogers Unison is designed to help small businesses become more mobile-first without looking unprofessional. The auto attendant, for example, will greet customers, while “Hunt Groups” will keep routing the call until a live person picks up. Another feature called “Dual Persona” lets companies keep their desk phone number or route to regional numbers so they appear to have a more local presence.
Leppanen cited a junk removal company whose goal is to grow nationally. Learning about Dual Persona, he said, meant that “for them, the lightbulb went off. Now they could advertise and promote themselves more locally than they ever could have before.”
“It’s good to see Rogers offer a solution that brings all the features of landline phones to mobile devices,” Mark Goldberg, a telecom industry consultant and founder, Mark H. Goldberg & Associates, said in a release.
