By Garrett Smith, Marketing and Business Development Director, VoIP Supply (July 2008)

You can’t be all things to all people.

Successful businesses know this and they play this tune like a fiddle. These successful brands know who their customer is and they deliver exactly what they need; nothing more, nothing less. They include by excluding. Apple does it. So too does Wal-Mart. Two very different companies, yet each have been extremely successful. They are successful because they religiously serve one customer type and deliver that message to them each and every day; they are not trying to be all things to all people.

You might be asking yourself what this has to do with you as a service provider and the idea of converged services.

Well, my friend, a lot.

Convergence, by its very nature, is all about delivering everything through one pipe, through one provider or device and therein lies a fundamental (marketing) problem. If not being all things to all people is a fundamental element of successful companies, then offering a handful of different services under one umbrella poses quite the problem for companies looking to offer converged services. As a service provider, it sure is easy to see the win for customers in offering three or four different services, but what is not so easy to see is the consumer confusion this causes.

We need to be honest with ourselves. We can’t be all things to all consumers.

What is wrong with doing one thing and doing it well? When was it decided upon that an IP communications provider had to deliver every possible IP based service they possibly could to a consumer? To existing customers convergence is just another word for cost reduction. To prospective customers, you know the ones who look at the technologies we love and deliver as means to an end and nothing more, who are you?

Are you the phone company, the cable company, the wireless carrier?

Multiple services, multiple bundles, multiple packages do nothing more than confuse. The more choices you provide, the less focused you become and the more diluted you become in the eyes of the consumer. Yes, some choice is good, but too much choice, too many services and too many offerings cause consumers to question who it is that you are as a company. Be wary of becoming a jack of all trades, master of none.

Confusion is not convergence’s only problem. Change is one as well.

Consumers are a fickle bunch. They don’t particularly like change. They like things the way they have always been and the majority wish them to remain that way indefinitely. That is why this whole idea of convergence; whether it is a bundled offering or fixed-mobile, has not been the game changer that many have thought it was going to be. Consumers do not want it; we do. We see the awesome technological accomplishment, the value of simplification of billing, the instant uptake in sales revenues, but consumers see the need to change their user habits (and sometimes performance quality) in order to take advantage of this - and change, as I said above, is something consumers do not do well.

One only has to look at the VoIP industry to see the pain in changing user habits. In 13 years, VoIP has managed to penetrate approximately 15% of the marketplace. That’s a little more than one percent per year. Not exactly the uptake one might expect for a technology that was supposed to revolutionize telecommunications and spell the death of the PSTN. Yes, there have been some technology hurdles, but the primary reason VoIP has not grown faster is that people are still confused by the technology because it does not mimic the traditional calling experience. Confusion and change cause consumers pain.

What? My Internet is my phone? My TV is my Internet? My cellular phone works over my Internet?

Convergence, in its many forms does hold tremendous promise - but as we can see, it also poses tremendous problems for those subscribing to these services. The problem is the pain it causes consumers through confusion and change because most providers are offering these services so that they can be all things to all consumers. However, that is impossible, and to think that in trying to deliver all things IP you are not doing this would be a lie.

So, service providers, before you go sipping the convergence Kool Aid, make sure you know who you target consumer is; who they are, who they are not, what they need and what they don’t need. You might be surprised to find that you are already exactly what they need - nothing more, nothing less.

In that regard, the convergence story may be something best kept to yourself to describe how you do what you do. If convergence is causing confusion you won’t be doing your customers any favors. It may well be that your subscribers are not interested in the convergence story, and as long as you deliver what they like you’ll keep their business. Whether you call it convergence or not, that’s all that really matters.

Garrett Smith is the Director of Marketing and Business Development at VoIP Supply, North America’s leading VoIP solutions provider with everything you need for VoIP. A notable blogger and industry expert, Smith was named as one of the Top 50 most influential people in VoIP by VoIP News in 2006. You can read of more of what he has to say about the VoIP and IP industries through his daily writings at http://www.SmithOnVoIP.com.