VoIP providers must improve support

MrBlog has an interesting post detailing the support available from many top VoIP providers and surprise surprise, support isn’t exactly a strong point for many of them.

From his results Skype and Jajah, both at the forefront of soft phone technology, don’t fare very well at all with nothing more than an email form and no responses. Other providers such as VoipBuster, VoipStunt, SIPDiscount and VoicePulse also fall flat on their face when it comes to customer service.

But it isn’t all bad news, some of the providers actually provided a response although some of them failed to provide an adequate solution to problems. Gafachi, Callcentric and Junction Networks all engaged in some form of communication with Diamondcard coming up trumps.

You would think that VoIP providers who specialize in cheap calls would offer more than just email support, or is that just me? I was watching an interview on the BBC with the chairman of BT, Sir Christopher Bland. One of the key things I took from the interview was that while they saw VoIP as the future and viewed Skype as a disruptive force, they strongly believed that consumers would not necessarily go with the cheapest call plan on offer.

In other words, added value services such as an individual on the end of the phone is important. Personally, I would argue that good tech support is critical if VoIP is to ever truly rival PSTN simply because it is more involving to setup.