Guide to Reselling Hero Services

1. Understand your clients needs and feature requirements

First you need to work out what your customer's requirements are and what features they will need for their phone system. Hero have a comprehensive Cloud PBX service with a rich feature set which is suitable for the vast majority of small to medium sized businesses. With Hero Connect we also have a powerful Smartphone Application which is available for both Apple and Android phones. However some customers have specific needs which may require an on-site PBX to be installed, and then you can setup a SIP trunk to Hero for their calling. The best approach is to listen to your customer first and get an idea of what they need and then decide on the solution that fits them best.

2. Choose your phones and devices

While more customers are switching to Apps and Software based phones, many customers still prefer a physical handset for making phone calls and Hero have a wide range of handsets available to cater for all business needs from basic handsets to advanced handsets with video calling capabilities etc. The great thing about being a Hero partner is that we take all the hard work out of programming/configuring the phones themselves with a fully automated provisioning service - so the phones will be delivered to your customer all setup and ready to go.

Some customers prefer not to use a physical handset and use a software based phone which runs on their computer or their Smartphone. Hero offer our Hero Connect Apps for calling on a Smartphone and we also support a wide range of "Softphones" for Windows, Mac and Linux, many of which s which are free of charge and easy to install such as the X-Lite client

When a customer needs something more tailored to their requirements such as a PBX or specific phone type then Hero can assist you with the installation of these devices. Hero is compatible with just about any SIP enabled phone or PBX system.

3. Choosing the right Hero plan

Hero have a range of Plans and Add-ons to meet just about any small to medium businesses needs. A good place to start is to get a copy of your customer's existing Telephone bill and then work out which plan suits them best. Our Flexi Line Bundles are usually the best way to go to save the customer money for their phone lines and calling minutes or you can add our account bundles if this makes more sense for the client. Again, you can speak to us directly to assist with this process if you are unsure - and we can even tailor a plan or bundle for your customer if required.

4. Testing your phones and Internet Connectivity

Once you have chosen a plan and the phones you wish to deploy for your customer - we usually then advise that you test the handsets on-site first with the customer to make sure everything is working well and running smoothly. We can give you some new Hero phone numbers to get you up and running and you can for example test first using our Hero Applications before purchasing hardware for your customer.

Another important consideration if the capabilities and suitability of your customer's existing internet connection. Most businesses today have a good broadband connection and Hero should work well for your customer without any modifications. However, for larger customers with many handsets it may be necessary to upgrade the Internet connection to something capable of handling the extra traffic generated by the VOIP traffic. It is sometimes also necessary (but not usually) to have a separate internet connection installed specifically for their phones - if their main internet connection is already congested or unsuitable. There are a few considerations when measuring the suitability of a customer's internet connection for VOIP traffic, mainly throughput (the amount of traffic their connection is capable of - remembering that VOIP traffic is in both directions so usually the bottleneck is the upstream data rate), but also VOIP traffic needs low latency with little variations. Again, we can help here troubleshoot this with you to make sure the connection is suitable to be used with our service. One tool that can be used here is a speed-tester such as http://www.speedtest.net/

5. Porting your customer's existing numbers to Hero

Although you can use Hero's own phone numbers anywhere in New Zealand and several other countries, most customers prefer to keep their existing phone numbers and move these to Hero. We make this process as simple as we can and assist you through the porting process. See our Porting FAQ for more details. Often you do not need to port all of your numbers to Hero but just those numbers which are advertised to customers. You can often replace the customer's existing extension/DDI numbers with Hero DDIs and just port the main pilot of tollfree numbers. Porting can take several weeks for complex ports so you need to keep that in mind.

You can use Hero numbers before porting to test your handsets first and then when you have ported the customers numbers these can be forwarded to your Hero numbers to reduce downtime for customers.

6. Installation, Support and Maintenance

Installation will obviously depend on your chosen solution. For softphones you simply need to install these on your customer's computers or smartphones and then just select a suitable headset for them to use when making calls when on a computer. Smartphone Apps won't need any additional hardware.

For physical handsets you will need to cable these up for your customer. We recommend you use a POE (Power Over Ethernet) switch for the phones to avoid having to purchase and attach power supplies. With POE the power for the phone is delivered over the same CAT6 cable as the data. There are some wireless phone options too if cabling is not convenient.

Finally, we can help you support your customer by pre-provisioning the handset and allowing you to make changes on the customer's phones without having to visit their site. We can also assist with troubleshooting of any issues you may have. As their reeller though we would expect you to assist with any physical cabling needs and on-site support.

Contact us today about our Reseller Programme by completing our contact form