The Story So Far
- HomeThe Story So Far
We set up VIP VoIP in 2013 but our story goes back to 2006 when two of our founding directors – Bill Jackson and Paul Maber - ran an IT solutions company called Yestech, based in Portsmouth. They wanted to relocate and were exploring ways to keep their business telephone number. One of their technical team suggested that VoIP could be an answer and introduced Bill and Paul to a friend who was selling Asterisk servers connected to a SIP gateway.
That meeting sparked a light-bulb moment when Bill and Paul realised that they had not only found the perfect solution to their immediate problem but they could have something new and interesting to sell. Yestech became a VoIP dealer – selling the equipment and services supplied by their new friend. By 2012 they had built a solid base of customers but they started bumping into problems. The architecture of the system was not easily scalable and the man who had built it all found that maintaining the system was taking up too much of his life. He wanted out.
Bill & Paul needed to find a new partner who could re-engineer the system architecture into a fully hosted solution and who could provide long-term maintenance, support and development of the software. Patience and a series of happy accidents led them to Patrick Beaumont and Mathew Dale who had all the necessary skills and resources. A deal was done to pool resources and we created VIP VoIP as a wholesale platform operator.
Then we began the mission to recruit resellers. We found our first ten very quickly by word of mouth and from prior business relationships. Since then we have grown steadily and carefully at a pace we can sustain without compromising our standards of quality and service.
"We don’t believe we need to tie our customers down in to lengthy contracts to keep them with us, our services speak for themselves."
The four original shareholders are still firmly in control and we have every intention of building up the business as a long-term investment. We have no plan to sell up and sit on beaches.
We see ourselves as a specialist artisan supplier of high-quality innovative solutions which our partners can sell profitably at a competitive price. We make friends with all our partners. We know what drives them, we listen to them and we support them. In return they stay loyal. Everyone understands the principle of mutual benefit.
We have room for more partners. There are several regions of the UK where we have little or no representation – such as the Midlands, the North-West, the East Coast, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Our target is one partner in each major city or regional hub. We don’t want our partners to be competing with each other. Quality is more important than quantity. We only want partners who share our customer service ethos and who will engage with us to keep our enviable level of long-term customer retention.
"No Lengthy Contracts, no setup fee, no product commitment, just a low-risk business opportunity"
Why VIP VoIP
No Lengthy Contracts
We don’t believe we need to tie our customers down in to lengthy contracts to keep them with us, our services speak for themselves. You can sign up to our hosted VoIP services and leave them whenever you want. It’s like a trial period with no end. You can use the services till you get comfortable and if you find they are not working for your business you simply stop using our services with no hard sell to keep you on. We found this especially useful for first time VoIP users as they can experience the benefits and workings of the system without the financial commitment of a 12 month plus contract.
No Setup Fee or Product Commitment
Still on the trait of not tying our customers down, we don’t charge a set up free or make you use our hardware. This is once again to allow you to try out our services and find the right fit for you. We also encourage our users to use existing phone hardware as it means they will be already familiar with it, allowing quick set up, and it means you don’t have to spend that extra money on hardware to get your VoIP system up and running. For those who are just starting out we do have products that are perfectly compatible and can be up and running within a few minutes of connectivity.
Truth & Transparency
As we mentioned in the introduction we hold transparency as a high trait in our organisation. We believe in running an ethical organisation where we provide our customers with exactly what they need while also running a competitive business. We want to work with businesses to create packages that fit the company dynamic and their services without encouraging customers to buy expensive add-ons or tie them in to unfair terms. We want our customers to know exactly what they are paying for and what they get.
Personalisation
At heart, our team are software developers, we love to experiment and change things up. We feel very comfortable in offering an entirely bespoke service to our end users so they can get exactly what they need. We work with other software partners to expand our features and improve the service we can offer. Not all businesses are the same and we work with a huge array of different sized ones, from micro one man bands to thousand phone, call centres, so we know the challenges are different for each company. We will work with you to create the package you need.
24 Hour Support
We supply phones around the world in different time zones so we make sure our clients have access to our dedicated support team 24 hours a day. We know that problems don’t always occur in the nine to five so we plan for out of hours help because it’s normally when you need it most.