Skype needs to "rebuild trust" among its small-business users if it is to continue as a serious option for enterprises, an analyst has warned. Last week it emerged that the VoIP company was withdrawing almost 10,000 0207-prefixed numbers from its SkypeIn service. SkypeIn is a paid-for service which gives users a geographic number for incoming calls. The withdrawal of the numbers came after talks broke down between Skype and its supplier of 0207 numbers, GCI Telecom. Due to the popularity of 0207 numbers, their cost has risen, and it seems Skype was unwilling to pay more than before to maintain those numbers.
Ian Fogg, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said that Skype must "rebuild trust" among its business customers. "My advice to Skype would be: if you, as a company, wish to target small businesses or even consumers, you need to respond swiftly to reassure your users that this isn't going to happen again," he said. "Don't offer a different number without some kind of transitionary agreement." Skype has offered affected users new SkypeIn numbers which don't begin with 0207. The 0207 prefix has always been popular with business customers because it implies that the user is based in central London.
But Fogg added that the issue was not so much the changing of numbers, because London's dialling codes have changed several times over the last two decades, but the fact that, with only a month's notice, no transitionary arrangement seems to have been in place for the affected users. "When a business or a consumer decides to take a subscription service for a number, they expect that to continue," said Fogg. "A lot of Skype's marketing in the UK and Europe has been particularly trying to focus on the business applications of Skype. If they hadn't targeted this area, then this number change wouldn't have been such a big thing." Many customers have been angered by the changes. One user, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had, until recently, been "an avid recruiter for Skype for Business". He suggested on Monday that: "Skype have got absolutely no idea of the damage this will do to their business." ... more>>>