|
| [December 31, 2008] |
 |
At One Year Anniversary, magicJack Inventor Dan Borislow Addresses Industry
PALM BEACH, Fla. --(Business Wire)--
Right out of the package, the plug-and-play magicJack enables you to make calls within seconds, supplying the highest-quality free long distance and local calling, your own phone number, free directory assistance and many other features - all for $19.95 a year. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3 and only takes seconds to get started.
Plug any phone you have into the magicJack (cordless, DECT, corded, portable).
Plug the magicJack into your USB port on your computer.
Make and receive calls like you always have. You can use it as your primary phone or a second line.
To mark the first anniversary of the revolutionary device, magicJack inventor Dan Borislow addresses the industry with the following letter.
"This has been an incredible year for magicJack and very much reminds me of my last company I started, as both companies have the distinction of starting out in a recession. Talk.com was formed in 1990 and went on to sell four million AOL customers long distance service. This is not a coincidence. The mother of all great inventions is necessity. People today are looking to save as much money as possible, as fast as possible. Like every typical American, when the times get tough, it is time to work harder, think with creativity, and adapt to your surroundings. I know that the hard work and great risk that went into building this company and developing the most cost-saving device ever built will be able to help almost anybody who uses a phone. We can save our millions of customers over $1 billion dollars in 2009.
Like I promised, we've gone from average to the very best in customer care. Also like Talk.com, I want great customer service to be the cornerstone of the company. Talk.com ranked near the top in JD Power and Associates Awards including customer care. It appears we are well on our way to receiving that honor with magicJack. This has been some process over the last year as we were convinced from the start that tech chat was the only way to go. Chat automatically provides the critical information (operating system, browser, internet status) that we need to help our customers fast. JD Power surveys have also recently indicated people are more satisfied with chat than voice help. It is difficult to do something no one has ever done before, but of course that is where the opportunity lies.
Here is a brief history of how we came to offer the best customer care in the industry within 12 short months:
At the end of every tech chat, we have our customers grade the support representative 1 , 2, 3, 4 or 5 (1 is poor, 5 is excellent).
When we started out, we received a disappointing 1 to 3 average customer care rating (1 poor grade for every 3 excellent grades). We had newly trained reps, a less than reliable network, some buggy software and some other minor issues. I spent too much of my own money and time to continue to perform so poorly.
Given time, all these things were fixed (over 700 bug fixes installed and added redundancy in the network meant 100 percent availability over the last six months - not down for even a second nationally), the support reps became more educated and the bottom-ranked agents were flushed out every month using our customer grading system. This has dramatically improved our grades from our customers.
We learned another trick too that no one else does - we now offer customers access to a "super rep" to escalate a service question and any customer who has graded us poorly on customer care before automatically goes to a super agent when they log in. A "super rep" is one who consistently gets the highest ratings from our customers.
Another issue causing customer complaints was in how to treat debit cards with our 30 day trial. This has also been resolved. At the time of the order, it is standard for a hold to be placed on the debit card which, while no one was charged, appeared to have the same effect as an actual charge. My choice was to either refuse debit cards like many businesses have done or to modify the program and alert people. We know people need to save money, so we modified the program and fixed the issue.
Today, we receive an average 1 to 20 rating from our customers (1 poor for every 20 excellent ratings). There is not another company remotely close to this superb performance and our people in charge of customer care should be very proud.
Our YMax Voice Network supported magicJack in selling over 2 million devices in 2008. Our parent company YMAX built and designed the lowest cost network in the industry, and this same design is also responsible for the highest quality voice in the business. It is no wonder that in using this network, magicJack appears to have become the fastest growing phone service provider ever in the United States with over 2 million sold in its first year of introduction. magicJack is also popular across the world and has been used in over 50 countries. How do we do it?
We use more switches/gateways (50 plus) than any other telecom company and locate them where our customers actually live.
We are the only telephone company certified in all 50 states.
We have the largest breadth of area codes in the country. A full list is available at http://www.magicjack.com/9/areacodes.asp.
We have more session border controllers for security than any other company.
We have an overabundance of capacity as we now add over 250,000 customers a month.
Like our network, we own all of our important assets and have made several acquisitions totaling $30 million. We knew the great risk we took in building this company and acquiring these assets would only pay off if we were able to reach a massive size. Fortunately, we sold 2 million customers and reached this desired scale in 2008. Incremental growth is very inexpensive now and we will be rewarded financially in 2009 with profitability.
magicJack's parent company not only has this incredible telephone network, but also owns our own chip company (TigerJet, acquired in 2008), our own software company (SJ Labs, acquired in 2007) that has created over 1.7 million lines of plug-and-play code for the magicJack and lastly, we just purchased the company (Stratus Technologies) that is the glue of the network and provides great features for our customers. We have filed six patents and hold one patent. These patents outline exciting technology that we will demonstrate the importance of in 2009. Through this new technology, we are leading in Femtocell technology for TV set-top boxes, PCs and any other box with a CPU and memory.
The last subject for this first year review is how and where we are selling magicJacks. The first large retailer to sell magicJacks is RadioShack. How well have they done? They have done so well that they keep adjusting their inventory numbers up to handle higher than expected demand. Best Buy will have magicJacks in all their stores by next week, and in their tests have also run out of magicJacks quite frequently. Without mentioning any more names, we will be in other top retailers starting this month with more to follow later in Q1. Military base stores will also have them available, where the savings can be in the thousands of dollars a year because of the large long distance and mobile phone bills that can be offset. Presently, the only place to get a 30 day free trial is at magicJack.com. The magicJack and one year of free service is still just $39.95 and subsequent years are just $19.95 a year. This includes getting your own phone number, free directory assistance and free local and long distance. The 2 million customers also have the ability to click to call free directory assistance and many other important destinations with the always-on portal.
I hope that everybody has a fruitful 2009, as we did in 2008. I also hope that magicJack is one of the reasons why 2009 will be a better year for everyone."
Sincerely,
Dan Borislow
Inventor, magicJack
Founder, YMax Corp.
About YMax Corp. and magicJack LP
YMax Corp. is a modern phone company with one of the largest newly deployed CLEC networks in the United States. Led by telecommunications veteran Daniel Borislow, YMax provides high quality, low-cost phone calls via the innovative magicJack USB device and YMax Voice network that puts an end to monthly phone bills. magicJack LP is a wholly owned subsidiary of YMax Corp. YMax also owns SJ Labs, the world leader in VoIP software, and offers its customized softphone solution with all magicJacks. YMax is a private company based in Palm Beach, Florida. Additional information about YMax can be found at www.ymaxcorp.com. To purchase or read more about the magicJack, go to www.magicjack.com.
[ Back To Homepage ]
|
