I am often asked to review a customer’s phone bill to see if they can get a better deal elsewhere.
My experience is that it is necessary to look beyond the headline call rates and discount schemes because of hidden charges like call set up fees and minimum call charges.
My preferred provider keeps things simple by having a low basic call rate and doesn’t have discount schemes or call set up fees.
They currently charge 1p per minute for local and national calls with a minimum call charge of 1p.
Their charges for mobile calls are 9p per minute with a minimum call charge of 3p.
Therefore when I analyse a phone bill the key figures that I need are total call duration and charges (after discounts) for local, national and mobile calls.
I then divide the total charges by the total call duration in minutes to get the effective per minute call rate for that customer.
It is important to note that two customers on the same call plan may have different effective call rates because they have different calling patterns.
For example, two customers with the same total call duration will have different bills if one makes lots of short calls and the other makes fewer, but longer calls.
Once I have the effective call rate for a customer I can compare it with that of my preferred provider.
I can also assess whether devices that can reduce call charges such as a VoIP gateway or a mobile phone gateway would benefit my customer.
Please contact me if you want advice on reducing your business phone call charges.