Voxox Uses Partner Feedback To Update Voxox Office Platform, Adds Commission Incentives

Unified communications provider Voxox Tuesday unveiled updates to its hosted PBX and SIP trunking offerings that it says will better address the needs of the channel. The company at the Cloud Partners conference in Boston also debuted a commission incentive for partners that will be in effect until the end of 2015.

The provider's carrier-grade Voxox Office platform, which delivers core voice services to small- and midsize-business customers, now includes a new set of new features including an improved user interface for managed service providers and their end customers, and modernized call center capabilities.

"Voxox is beating the competition to the table here with a more robust hosted offering," said Mark Stackpoole, CEO of Detroit-based telecommunications consulting firm GTS Direct, a Voxox partner. "The new features are helping to take it to the next level, with very little hassle on the setup."

[Related: Adapt Or Die: UC, VoIP On-Premises Must Shift To Cloud, Analysts Say]

Voxox primarily sells its business solutions through the channel. According to Stackpoole, the company is very receptive to partner feedback.

"It was time to listen to the feedback we were getting about what would make the solution easier to sell and better for customers," said Tristan Barnum, chief marketing officer for San Diego-based Voxox.

GTS Direct's agent partners started getting interested in hosted PBX offerings about two years ago, according to Stackpoole. While many hosted PBX solutions can offer the same functionality, GTS Direct has been highlighting Voxox solutions because of their intuitive features for both partners and end users, Stackpoole said.

"As we upgrade all our existing customers to the new hosted platform, we'll be able to meet all of our customers' needs," he said.

The new call center features include agent log-ins, call queuing, chat, and advanced management and monitoring tools. Partners also can use Voxox APIs to integrate their own value-added services into the customer's CRM solution. For example, partners could enable the Voxox PBX to automatically pull in a record from Salesforce during an inbound phone call, Voxox's Barnum said.

In addition to deeper reporting features, the updated operator console now allows call center operators to route calls in real time and drop calls in and out of queues.

"The console is a lot more robust," Barnum said. "We had some very basic queuing before and it was kind of unwieldy to manage. This is a lot cleaner with a smooth user interface."

Voxox is also offering a user interface for channel partners to send proposals and manage orders directly, a feature they specifically have been asking for, Voxox's Barnum said. Partners can log in and create a new proposal with a click of a button. From the interface, partners can click on necessary information, such as the number of phone lines the customer wants, and the offering generates everything they need -- including PDFs they can send to their customers that include the proposal, Barnum said.

"It’s the ability for them to turn that sale around much more quickly without having to jump through different systems," she said.

Once the customer is satisfied with the proposal, the order is sent to Voxox to be built. "It’s a very quick turnaround," she said. "This process used to be more cumbersome -- it's pretty typical to use different quoting systems, so now we have a far more straightforward path from quoting the solution, to getting it built, turned on, and the customer happy."

Under the new commission incentive, Voxox partnerswill be able to double their commission rates --- up from the 20 percent standard for partners and the 25 percent for certified partners to 40 percent to 50 percent for the first year of a 12-month minimum contract on any hosted PBX or SIP trunking deal closed through to the end of the year.

The deal will reward longtime Voxox partners, as well as potentially catch the eye of new partners, Barnum said. "It's really a way to get partners to try these new offerings we have. It could be a way to get these partners into voice, or if they already offer voice, to add Voxox as a provider to their portfolio," she said.

GTS Direct's Stackpoole said that he's never seen an incentive for partners like the deal Voxox is bringing to the table.

"I think it’s a revolutionary commission move and it's going to catch on immediately," he said.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 16, 2015