Bell, Rogers & TELUS are like gas stations. As soon as one changes their prices or offerings the others will quickly follow suit. It is a constant in the wireless industry that will never change. What each can do is embrace newer technology and offer APIs that set themselves apart.
1 – Consumer Phone Pricing & Rate Plan APIs
More than ever customers shop & research online for the best phone and rate plan before visiting a store. A Google search for “best cell phone plan” will take you to one of a number of comparison websites where you can.
Problem: Bell, Rogers and TELUS do not offer an API solutions that allow third party companies to see their publicly listed phone & rate plan pricing. A person would need to physically browse their website to find changes.
Solution: Offer an API solution with webhooks that specific companies can access for consumer phone & rate plan pricing. As soon as your offerings change these companies can update their websites providing consumers with your latest phone or plan changes before your competitors.
Third-party plan comparison websites see hundreds of thousands of Canadians visit to shop for phone & plan comparisons every month. They include:
https://www.whistleout.ca/
https://www.planhub.ca/
https://www.comparecellular.ca/
https://www.ratehub.ca/
2 – Corporate & EPP Phone Pricing & Rate Plan APIs
Bell, Rogers & TELUS all offer significant discounts to their corporate customers along with discounted employee plans (EPP/IDV) for those same companies. These rate plan offerings are not publicly listed and are subject to change without notice.
Problem: Corporate, EPP and IDV phone and plan pricing can change at a moments notice. Those changes are typically communicated via bulletins or emails with large complicated excel spreadsheets.
Solution: Offer an API solution with webhooks that specific companies can access for corporate/EPP/IDV phone & rate plan pricing.
Examples of third parties that offer corporate/EPP/IDV web solutions:
https://wyrk.ca/
https://www.wirelessfreedom.ca/
https://gentraf.com/
3 – Activation APIs
Today Bell, Rogers, TELUS & Videotron sales reps will swivel chair from their carrier activation portal to their POS system to complete the activation process and sale. Activations will often take up to 40 minutes which is very long and deserves better solutions.
Problem: Carriers lock the activation process within their online web portals forcing retailers to manually swivel chair activations. This manual process then creates problems with accepting online orders one day that could no longer be available the next.
Solution: Offer a suite of Activation APIs to specific companies to facilitate online activations without having to use the carrier’s web activation portal.
POS companies that would benefit:
https://www.iqmetrix.com
https://raysoft.ca/en/
Third-party web solution providers that would benefit:
https://wyrk.ca/
https://www.wirelessfreedom.ca/
https://gentraf.com/