A big thank you to our advisory board participants who sat down with us over the last few weeks to detail their priorities for the coming quarter and to provide feedback on the features and products we released last quarter.
Based on all the feedback received, we have come up with a really exciting list of tasks to knock off between now and the end of September.
Unfortunately, we can’t get on to every requested task, so we have prioritised the most requested items and those that can realistically be completed in side the 3 month window.
This is still an aspirational list, but we don’t enter into it lightly, and will be working hard to knock it out of the park. We have an 85% hit rate year to date on achieving stated aims each quarter, so I feel good about our chances of making this list a reality in the near future.
With the caveats out of the way, lets look at the detail…
New Products
We are continually looking to improve our service offering in line with, or in advance of, industry trends. We have a strong focus on introducing new services, and service variants, to our voice and unified communications suite. This quarter we will complete the following:
What we are calling it | What it is |
Unlimited calling plans | Unlimited fixed line and mobile calls to anywhere in Aus or NZ on a p/channel basis. Variable charges for inbound tollfree/1300 and outbound calls to international destinations will still apply. These plans are due for release August 1st 2020. |
NZ/AU minutes included in all call bundles | All existing and new voice bundles will have national and mobile minutes apply to NZ and Australian destinations, rather than just one or the other as they are at present. This will be done with no price increase applying. Due for release September 1st 2020. |
Becoming a 3CX solutions provider | Lightwire will commence working directly with 3CX to procure licenses. Lightwire is the only 3CX Platinum partner and preferred SIP provider across NZ and Australia, it makes sense for us to take that a step further and help other organisations source 3CX licenses at a great rate. |
Easy wholesale billing and customer management of internet services
You need to drive information flow and act on objective assessment of the data available to you in the best interests of your customers/users.
We have plans to reduce billing and administrative overhead through proactively providing key information are listed in this section. It’s all about putting the power to determine billing outcomes and information flow in your hands.
The features listed in the tables below will be introduced to illume, our customer portal.
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What we are calling it |
What it is |
|
Filter/report on internet services by circuit utilisation |
A 3 – 6 month trend presented, showing how much time has been spent above 80%. Allows tech contacts to accurately state whether a circuits speed is a good fit vs it is time for an upgrade. Report sent detailing which sites that have exceeded 80% utilisation more than xyz number of times in a given month Note: This may not be possible for NBN TC4 services, we are still looking at ways to resolve this. |
|
Subscriptions expiring report |
Channel partners and wholesalers can effectively upsell and manage churn by having LW advise 90/60/30 days from expiry. Notifications will have a click to dismiss button on email received (with that action able to be seen and associated to a user within illume) A related action point is to allow users to filter services by contract expiry date in accounts view. |
Make selling and supporting 3CX, Teams Calling and SIP services easier
Giving sales leaders the power to manage billing, and the visibility to ensure customers are on the right service and plan. We are working hard to progressively remove billing admin overhead.
What we are calling it | What it is |
Display/alert on channel (line) utilisation for voice clients | Probably the most exciting thing we have planned for this quarter, and even more relevant with unlimited plans being determined on a p/channel basis. A graph, much like the existing utilisation graph for internet services, will display channel utilisation in real time for voice services. Applies to 3CX/SIP/Teams Calling and will report on any clients that have hit their limit in real time. Trends over last three months shown. |
Resellers to add own voice retail rates to Illume | Billing complexity is one of the biggest blockers to wholesale voice success, so we aim to fix that with this feature. illume will have a section where wholesalers can set an end users retail rates. Rates will default to Lightwire’s RRP but will be able to manually updated per customer by wholesalers. Lightwire will then generate end user billing reports each month for wholesalers to save any calculations being required. This feature will significantly decrease billing effort, and simplify wholesale delivery of voice services through Lightwire |
Mobile pack exceeded email with option to click to add more | At present mobile add-on packs can only be added at the start of a billing period, and that’s a problem as when included mobile minutes are exceeded, calls revert to a higher p/min charge. This feature will allow additional mobile calling packs to be added at any stage by prompting the end user to choose to buy an additional mobile calling pack before the current allowance is exceeded. This is another great example of how our development efforts are helping reduce customer spend. |
Promote your brand
We know that if you are a wholesale partner of Lightwire Business, you need to own the end user relationship and that needs to be reflected end to end. We couldn’t fit these tasks into Q3, but as they are exciting and requested by a number of customers, I wanted to point out that they will be in the mix in Q4.
We are going to give your business the customer facing tools it needs to differentiate itself, with your brand front and centre.
What we are calling it | What it is |
Add reseller logo to shared Pulse dashboard
| Pulse is a tool inside illume that presents real time status and service detail in an intuitive layout. When sharing a link to a unique dashboard view with an end user, the wholesaler’s logo will show with “powered by Lightwire” underneath |
White labelled agreements for wholesalers
| Wholesalers need to have their customer sign an order before submitting one with Lightwire. In this scenario, wholesalers would log into illume, enter end user details and service type/price and Docusign would send agreement with wholesalers branding to end user. The signing of that agreement would then trigger process end to end with Lightwire Business. Just a reminder, we are looking at Q4 for this one. |
Innovate
A catch all field for independent tasks we are undertaking to improve the way we provide services to you.
What we are calling it | What it is |
Clearly define what each contact type means for end users
| It is a bit vague at present as to what each type of contact means inside illume, so we are giving users the ability to make the right selection when creating users or assessing their own best fit. Technical vs general vs billing vs site contact… it will all make sense. |
Contact cards should show when last logged in instead of when created
| Enables others in the business to assess illume use, and gives LW staff the ability to report on individual user uptake and potentially send them prompts to encourage uptake |
LW and customers able to change contact type after creation | Set up as a technical contact on sign up but no longer need to get service notifications? We will make that process easy to handle. |
Show LW AM for each account on external view | Customer users to see LWB AM allocation for them, and channel partners to see the AM allocated to accounts they manage |
Communication
Accurate and transparent comms, with key technical contacts given control over what is said, and to whom. This section covers the tasks we have lined up that will put the power to make smart decisions in your hands.
What we are calling it | What it is |
Notifications related to service outages or planned notifications need to show who else has been notified
| For outages/planned events – and sales related notifications as well, we need to show recipients who else in their organisation has received the same notification. It will stop needless forwarding of emails with comments like, “have you also seen this?” |
Add additional handover ports to handover utilisation graph shown here | Lightwire runs a tight ship, we know fast speeds and low latency are critical factors for our clients, so we are focused on giving ever more transparency into how we run our network with real time network utilisation views on key network elements. |
Internal things
The things our customer won’t necessarily see, but that will help us work more effectively and generate better outcomes for them.
What we are calling it | What it is |
Solve channel partner view/access control | We will create a managed service provider (responsibility as technical contact for an end user) function as distinct from a channel partner (receives ongoing rebates for a service they have referred to LWB). This will ensure the right access exists to all accounts and remove some existing confusion. |
Voice alerts feeding into on call process | Lightwire has a robust on call process with defined and automated escalation paths. We will be adding 3CX services to that flow to ensure immediate action on detected issues out of hours. |
Determine between Aus and NZ voice clients for notifications | We have some scenarios where actions by a carrier will only impact users on one side of the Tasman. We don’t want to spam customers, so need to have ability to segment voice service contacts based on location. |
Automating Audiocodes SBCs config for new Teams Calling users | Teams Calling with Direct Routing sales continue to ramp up, this is a measure to allow our processes to scale through automation of existing manual tasks. |
Ultrafast Fibre API scoping | Looks like UFF are close to pushing out their much awaited API, so we will be looking at what detail we can gain from integrating our SQ tool and provisioning systems, and the work required to implement |
Enable SQ and Diagnostic APIs | Enable Fibre is also on track to release their API and Lightwire has been selected to take part in their trial deployment as group of 5 initial ISPs |
So that’s the list for Q3 (and a sneak preview of Q4), it is going to be a massive 12 or so weeks with huge outcomes for our clients.
That just leaves me to say thanks to our amazing dev team who just keep smashing out the results, and to our customers for being so actively involved in our continual process of improvement.
Brendan Ritchie
