When Sachin Vaish, managing director, Vaioni, founded the company he set out to deliver three things: a good quality connectivity platform, choice between carriers, and exceptional customer experience.
He said, “All of those three things still play a significant part in our vision and our purpose. We still want to provide a reliable connectivity platform, choice is still a big part of our play especially with FTTP in the altnets coming to the fore, and customer experience underpins our entire strategy.”
He said that Vaioni’s team of customer success managers (CSM) have a core remit to “keep the customer happy” and since bringing in that CSM approach the business has seen its Net Promoter Score (NPS, a measure to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm with a company) “double from where it was to where it is now”.
Vaish added, “That’s testament to that change being a big one. We have made people changes, system changes, and process changes that were all geared around customer experience.”
Those three pillars – people, system and process – are central to ensuring customers have a good experience. Vaish explained, “The network and the stability of your infrastructure is critical. We’re renowned for delivering ultra-reliable, high-bandwidth connectivity. That’s why people buy from us.
“It’s by far the biggest theme that customers [refer to] when they talk about us as an organisation. Reliability is by far the biggest benefit that customers get from us.”
Choice, reliability and quality
Vaioni also ensures that it provides vendor choice. Vaish said, “Our product strategy, which focuses on customer experience, is all about using the best vendors and manufacturers in the industry.
“They are market leaders in their own right as that plays a huge role in the customer experience. We only offer products and services with proven reliability and quality.”
Connectivity and broadband across the UK, Vaish argued, is now in a great place in terms of technology, capability, speed and cost. But the market is facing some challenges.
Vaish said, “We’ve now got a very bloated altnet market. There’s just too many. We’ll see at least 50 per cent of those disappear in the next 12 to 24 months. There’ll be mass consolidation on the back of that, and we’ll end up back down to five or maybe six key carriers in the market.
“Next, we’ll probably see a little bit more consolidation, and we’ll see who are the big three or four players [remaining] in the marketplace.”
Vaish emphasised that the “biggest challenge” that the industry faces is its “ability to deliver” in terms of both building fibre and getting users onto those networks.
He added, “That’s why we’ll see this mass consolidation, because these guys haven’t necessarily thought out the sales and marketing strategy. We’ll see [what happens].
“Nonetheless, it’s a very vibrant market. Lots and lots of players and it’s good to see because Openreach has now deployed to 10 million homes with its FTTP product. Would they have done that if the market hadn’t become so bloated? I’d like to think yes, but the answer is no. They’ve been forced to make it happen. And hopefully that continues.”
For Vaioni, Vaish explained, the company will continue to invest in its “connectivity ecosystem” to provide choice in Ethernet and broadband. He added, “There are four to six FTTP vendors out there that are of interest to us and we will aggregate those into our connectivity platform.”
That will make Vaioni’s connectivity ecosystem “bigger, more powerful, with more choice and more technology”. Vaish added, “Our strategy is to continue investing in giving our partners the very best and the biggest choice of technology, carriers and solutions when it comes to connectivity.”
Next gen MSP
Vaish discussed the company’s long-term vision. He explained, “Our longer-term strategy is transitioning from this traditional ISP that does connectivity to be a next generation MSP. So what does that mean? A typical MSP doesn’t generally own their own network, connectivity isn’t their foundation. For them it’s about system integration and delivering their managed services proposition.
“For us, as a next generation MSP, connectivity plays a critical role and we own the network. We control the plumbing that then drives the performance and the reliability of cloud applications.
“Our next generation MSP play has connectivity as the base layer, cybersecurity is then the next layer for us, and then we’ve got our voice services portfolio which incorporates unified communications, contact centre, omnichannel and SIP services as well.
“The long-term for us is transitioning from a traditional ISP to a next gen MSP by giving our customers the critical components to run a successful business.”
In terms of the Channel, Vaish explained that the company will be able to offer connectivity, cybersecurity and voice services alongside the “biggest choice of connectivity, the best vendors and the best manufacturers all wrapped up in a really good customer experience proposition”.
He concluded, “There’s nobody who is doing what we’re doing in the way we’re doing it. It will be interesting, we have got some competitors who are getting close to what we do, but we’ve got such focus on these three core areas, with connectivity being the piece that differentiates us. That will spearhead us.”
This interview appeared in our October 2023 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.