Letting agents help Home Telecom to record growth

As Home Telecom approaches its 10,000^th customer, this is the first time agents earn from an excellent service with little effort, so we took the opportunity to reflect on the exceptional growth we have achieved in the past 12 months.

Earlier this year, we noticed many tenants were entering into long contracts well beyond their tenancy term as there were no providers offering a flexible short contract to suit tenants or match a break clause in their tenancy agreement.

In the majority of cases, this resulted in new tenants or landlords being chased for outstanding debts left by a previous tenant. Home Telecom was quickly formed to provide a telephone line and broadband service to tenants the day they move in and only for the term of their tenancy. Should they wish to stay longer, our flexible contracts simply roll on monthly. Both home owners and tenants are able to take advantage of our short term contracts.  

We set about reviewing the marketplace further and very quickly found that many of the packages advertised on TV and the internet were not as first perceived.

Many of the packages advertised in the national press are long term and with some deals only available in certain areas of the UK, many end up paying more than they expected. This coupled with numerous hidden charges, expensive call costs (e.g. 17p for a local call) and misleading claims of broadband speeds that never materialise were further adding to customers’ frustrations.

To solve this, Home Telecom offers home users a business broadband line with a contention ratio of just 20:1 (compared to the average of 50:1), unlimited downloads and local call costs of just 2p.

Our experience tells us that after sales support is as important to our customers as the product itself. We found many users of our competitors’ service were unhappy about the difficulty and time spent obtaining customer support, with many call centres are now based overseas. Fortunately for us, our customers often tell us that the 24/7 support offered by our friendly UK based staff is one of the main benefits to our service.

Finally and most importantly, the flexibility of our contracts is the real star in our success story. Our contracts are flexible and for the term of the tenancy only, meaning no settlement fee applies when the tenant moves out, unlike our competitors.

So after winning the support of the UK’s leading estate agents, Home Telecom has gone from strength to strength with many thousand satisfied tenants now using our service. And with almost 1000 new clients each month, we’re predicting a turnover of at least £8m over the next 12 months.

Thanks everyone for your support.