Usually it’s the smaller companies that don’t have as much to lose that tend to have a do whatever it takes attitude, without regard for the customer or what people think about them. Someone pointed that out to me when we were talking about some of the recent problems we’ve seen in the toll free industry. Ironically, one of the larger players in the enhanced voicemail category seems to be the one with the Do Anything for a Buck attitude regardless of the long term damage that creates to their reputation and brand. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m referring to Onebox.

Onebox is owned by J2 which bought PhonePeople and more recently TollFreeMax and TollFreeExpress too. They also own eVoiceReceptionist not to mention eFax, an industry leader in a slightly different category. j2 communications is a large company, especially compared to many of the other enhanced voicemail services which tend to be smaller. They probably own roughly a third of the major companies in that category. So you would think that they would be the most careful and most corporate in terms of customer service and attitude.

Big companies understand the need to keep Customer Service first

Unfortunately almost the exact opposite seems to be the case, in my own personal experience. As I said, this is just my own person experience (I’m sure they have a lot of lawyers just itching to clobber me) but it’s actually based on talking to quite a lot of customers every day. Onebox behaves like a dying company trying desperately to hold onto their customers rather than an industry leader growing their business by setting the example for customer service.

An ear to the customers

One of the advantages that I have over most business owners is that I’m still small enough to handle a lot of the phone calls every day and I really like doing that. You’ll never reach the owner of almost any other telecom business on their main number, but I think staying on the front line is very important.

In addition to meaning I have to work 15 hours a day, it also tends to give me much more of a customer centric attitude. So that along with 14 years of experience in this little niche business and a blog to share my experience means I tend to point out negative things in toll free more than almost anyone else. I figured it was worth mentioning that because I’m not railing on j2 for the fun of it. I’m pointing out what I see because I love the toll free business and I think it needs to be said.

Onebox could be so much better

Onebox is an attractive service and has the potential to be great, if the management took a big company approach instead of the little almost petty and vindictive stance that they seem to have started with and are ultimately becoming known for. Google Voice is coming and if Onebox doesn’t change their attitude and really change things to improve their customer relations Google is going to eat their lunch.

Hopefully someone high up enough in the parent company will see and understand the a spirit in which I say these things and find a way to change the little small minded almost vindictive policies they’ve built in. If they do, I’ll certainly talk about it and promote them in a positive light rather than the negative one they’ve earned to date. If they don’t Google will add a couple more features to their service and j2 will turn into that desperate company struggling to hold on that they are acting like.

Related posts:

PhonePeople holds customers hostage at TollFreeNumbers.com
Why is ownership of your toll free number so Important?
j2 doesn’t want me to tell people what they’re doing
Big Companies behaving badly

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