About PhoneTips
The PhoneTips.net site was essentially born out of the need to free up more time for me to devote to my customers. So to understand PhoneTips you should know a little more about me.
My name is Su Ryan, and I have been a telecommunications cost control consultant since 1995. I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck that is. It’s really just a very big title for a very simple function. I analyse and audit phone bills for my corporate customers to make sure they understand exactly what they are paying for (and what they should not be charged for), then help them find alternate long distance solutions that will reduce those expenses.
I reviewed all of the plans available from each of the major resellers and determine which one would best suit my customer’s needs and recommended that service. This worked fine for a while, and my customers were more than willing to pay the consulting fee since their savings far exceeded my fee. However, I realized that residential customers were also paying far too much for their long distance and I wanted to do something to help them as well.
It would not be cost effective for me to provide the same one-on-one service because their savings would not be nearly enough to cover my fee — even though their percentage savings would be the same. So I searched for providers I could partner with on the Internet, planning to negotiate with each one individually. I found the first one, but it did not work well for me or my customers. However, through that partnership I met Kevin Anderson, who was starting up his own company — comprised of a suite of services that was very impressive. He understood, as did I, that no long distance service could be the best solution for everyone. So he made sure that he offered services that cover as many customer usage requirements as possible, to ensure every customer would be able to find at least one plan that would solve their particular problem (more about this in a later article). Truly genius, and I believe he was the first to do this. That company is Cognigen Networks Inc.
I was eager to come aboard and have been recommending those services to many of my customers ever since, through my online site Ryan TelCom.
I thought that would provide the solution, since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, consumers have been free to select their long distance provider and I assumed that by now everyone would know what to look for when shopping for a long distance service. Well, we all know what happens when you assume. To this day I continue to get the same questions about the basic criteria involved in selecting the right long distance service. I finally decided to do a few Internet searches to see if this information was available anywhere. Guess what? I did manage to find a few tidbits here and there; but overall it was difficult to find — and what I did find was more often than not written in telecomese, which may as well be Greek since the average consumer could not be expected to understand it.
Fast forward to today. I decided it was about time consumers have access to the tools and information they need to determine — on their own — which long distance service best suits their needs. Doing so will also save me from answering the same questions over and over. Okay, so I’m a bit selfish, too; but every minute I save answering questions before my customers select a service affords me more time to assist them after they switch. So it’s really a win-win solution.
Thus the birth of PhoneTips.net. I do hope you enjoy it.
