Why technology resellers should make the most of opportunities in voice – and how cloud communications provider NFON can help
Technology Reseller talks to NFON UK about the opportunities for IT resellers in voice and CX. Technical Director Hemal Gajjar highlights NFON’s technical strength, from ownership of its own platform to an ambitious R&D programme, while UK Marketing Director Chris Selby-Rickards outlines the extensive support given to channel partners – especially those new to voice. Together, they talk about today’s growth areas, including Microsoft Teams integrations, cloud contact centres and AI, and explain why now is the ideal time for IT resellers to bring NFON business communications into their portfolios. It’s not just about the ISDN switch-off.
Technology Reseller (TR): NFON was founded in Munich, Germany in 2007 and, in 2013, expanded into the UK and Ireland where it now has a network of about 200 active partners selling predominantly, but not exclusively, to SMEs. What would you say are its main differentiators?
Hemal Gajjar (HG): I would say the best thing about NFON is that we own our own platform. It’s designed by us and the R&D on the platform is our own so we are able to be really agile. We can develop new features very rapidly and have control over our end user offering.
Chris Selby-Rickards (CS-R): We floated on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange a few years ago and raised an awful lot of capital to enable us to pump money back into R&D and keep developing our platform. We are completely channel-based. We only work with resellers and don’t sell to end users. We work hand in hand with our partners and they feed their customers’ needs back to us, so our R&D schedule is very much based on what customers want.
TR: What do you see as the key growth areas at the moment?
CS-R: The market went from just telephony to unified communications and now the trend is towards what we would call collaboration-enabled licences. It’s more than just dial tone and voice. People are wanting to utilise tools like Microsoft Teams, but in a single interface, in a single offering.
We’ve spent a lot of time and money developing our Microsoft Teams integrations and continue to push that. Now, with things like the ISDN switch-off and the move from on-prem systems to the cloud, we’re seeing more and more companies across the spectrum going straight to collaboration- only. They want different integrations, mostly but not exclusively with Microsoft Teams. That has shaped our development, so we now have four routes to market (Ed – the Cloudya cloud phone system; SIP Trunk Flex, bringing the benefits of the cloud to an existing phone system; integrations between Cloudya and existing IT and collaboration systems e.g. Microsoft Teams, CRM, ERP etc.; and a cloud contact centre).
HG: That’s one of the reasons why we’re targeting IT resellers. As Chris said, there’s going to be a big push to Teams with the ISDN switch-off and we know IT resellers are comfortable with Microsoft. We have a SIP trunk offering and we have Direct Routing, which is very much enterprise- grade because it integrates Teams with our Cloudya platform. Operator Connect will eventually become the dominant option, but for now it’s Direct Routing.
CS-R: IT resellers need to expand their portfolios and voice is an obvious addition. Many of their customers want to consolidate all their services into one offering, so they will no longer have one person to do their telephony, one person to do their photocopiers, one person to do their connectivity. Instead, they will have one supplier, one invoice and one price. IT resellers have an advantage because they have skills and expertise in Microsoft and that infrastructure. Adding voice can be challenging, but that’s where we come in.
TR: Obviously, having control of your own platform makes these integrations easier.
HG: One hundred percent. We work well with our partners, we’re always getting feedback from them, and there is a very smooth process back to development. We produce whatever features are needed and can easily integrate with Teams or anything new that comes to market.
TR: Cloud contact centres is one of the four routes to market that you mentioned. Is that a growing area for you?
CS-R: We launched Contact Centre Hub, our Cloud Contact Centre offering, at the beginning of last year and it’s been a massive growth area for us. We forecast that demand would be in a specific size of business, but we’ve seen growth across all sizes of business, particularly the mid-market.
Customer experience is the number one trend now, when you can’t compete with price and product alone. And one of the biggest ways to achieve CX is to have the right omni-channel solution in place so that your customers can do things their way.
People get quite nervous about contact centre. They have preconceived images of big rooms full of agents wearing headsets and expect everything to be complex and difficult. But that’s not
what a Cloud Contact Centre is. A small business can now make use of technology that was traditionally very expensive and they don’t need to have a big CX estate behind it – they might only need one, two or three users (or agents) who could be working from home. We call it an informal contact centre.
TR: Hemal, as Technical Director, are you looking at AI and how that might impact CX?
HG: Yes, and we’ve now got a whole division dedicated to AI. In terms of the contact centre, AI is already here. We’re trialling it and we are encouraging our partners to use it. We’ve seen impressive results in how it learns and is able to provide a very superior customer service experience.
CS-R: So much of this, again, is coming from the end user. There are real life examples where the customer is pushing the partner and what we particularly like is that our partners then put pressure on us so we know where the pain points and challenges are and, with our very big R&D operation, can match those to our to do list.
TR: Chris, could you tell me a little bit about NFON’s route to market in the UK?
CS-R: We sell exclusively through the channel, and there are obvious benefits to that. From our perspective, we gain instant access to a much wider end user base and it vastly increases our skill set and helps us break into new verticals. From a reseller perspective, they’ve got a choice of business model. We offer wholesale partnerships, which is great if you want to control your own margins etc., and commission partnerships. We find that a lot of newer partners and smaller partners, particularly if they’re new to the market, come in as commission partners. There’s no financial risk for them – we take all the risk and look after pricing and billing and provide a complete wraparound service with technical support, marketing support, sales support, pre-sales support. The partner sells our services to the customer and gets a commission on every deal they make.
TR: What developments can we look forward to from NFON in the next six to 12 months?
CS-R: Earlier we were talking about integrating voice with Teams, but we’re also doing more on the analytics and compliance side of things. What I mean by that is having something like traditional PBX call and queue analytics or compliance recording but for all interactions going through the Teams interface. In addition, we will continue to work with our contact centre vendor to improve and upskill and up-develop that solution, particularly when it comes to AI. Those are probably the priority focus areas for us.
HG: Like Chris said, AI is definitely going to be a big push. It is the big buzzword but we really want to make it work and in a way that is user-friendly so that people want to embrace it. That’s going to be in our contact centre solution and it will be a game-changer. Working with Teams is going to continue – we see that getting stronger, with so many businesses moving into Teams.
CS-R: In addition to our product development, we constantly evolve and improve our processes – how we work with partners and the services and support we offer. We constantly finesse and improve those as much as we can.
TR: If an IT reseller is interested in getting into voice, what should they do?
CS-R: Find out what your existing customers need. If they’re not asking for voice, or they don’t need it, or they don’t want it, are you able to find new customers that do want it without a massive investment? There’s no point spending time and money and effort and resources to adapt your business to something that none of your customers want. Thankfully, communications is something that every business needs and most of the business world uses Microsoft applications so with the transition from voice-only licences to collaboration-enabled licences, you’re unlikely not to find a need. Go with the needs of your customer base first and then start looking at how you can develop net new from there.
And get in touch with us, talk to us, see how we can help. That’s what we’re here to do.
TR: We see a lot in the press about the ISDN switch-off. Is that something that IT resellers should be looking to exploit?
CS-R: Absolutely. At the end of the day, their customers are going to be affected by it if they haven’t already moved from an on- premises system. And with people wanting one invoice, one price, multiple services from one supplier, they should go out and talk to their customers. There’s been a
stay of execution because the switch-off has been pushed back to the beginning of 2027, but our position hasn’t changed. Start looking at it sooner rather than later. These processes always take much longer than you realise and it will give you time and options. There’s nothing worse than having to make a last-minute decision.
HG: This is going to be a big change. Having ISDN was a business need and the move to IP is a chance for IT resellers to move into a different market. And why not? If you’re an IT reseller, it’s something you can layer on top. And, as the switch-off date gets closer, the government may give grants as they’ve done in other sectors.
CS-R: As with everything talk to your customers. Give them what they need.
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