The New York Times Matt Richtel has this piece today on Vonage, which includes a rare interview with high-profile co-founder Jeff Citron (whom Richtel misidentifies as CEO of the company — Citron is actually Chairman and Chief Strategist. Michael Snyder was named CEO in February after it became clear that past difficulties with the SEC barred Citron from maintaining his CEO duties.) Richtel asked Citron about the spectacular freefall that beset Vonage’s stock following its public debut.
Citron said little about the public shoot-down of the VoIP pioneers stock, other than he was “confused.”
“I was a little, I guess, confused, “Mr. Citron said last week, in one of his first interviews since that day. His face flushed slightly when the subject came up.
Citron did let spill an interesting fact that is supposed to be announced by Vonage today (highly doubtful given that it’s Labor Day). Vonage has hit the two million customer milestone.
This means that Vonage has added around 147,000 net new customers in the two months since 6/30/06, when the total customer base was 1,853,253. At this rate, Vonage’s growth for the third quarter of 2006 ending September 30 could be a net gain of 220,000 or so customers, a decent run rate given Vonage’s quarterly track record to date. But, Vonage has yet to release quarterly data for Q3, so it’s hard to tell if these gains are seasonally good or bad for the company.
Vonage is trying to clean up its customer service problems, which should reduce churn and help growth momentum.
Mr. Citron said Vonage must reduce the number of customers it lost each month. To do so, he said, it is hiring more customer service workers and trying to train them better so they can resolve problems the first time subscribers call.
“Customer care was the biggest issue,” he said. Of the efforts to improve service, he said, “it’ll take us another quarter before we get it wrapped up.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:26 AM|Comments(1)
Well, Vonage has definitely not cleaned up their customer service issues. I signed up for Vonage in September 2006 and after experiencing poor connection quality, I called back in October to cancel the service, under the umbrella of a money back guarantee. The service rep would not take no for an answer, insisted on my keeping the service, and extended the money back guarantee another month. After another month of poor quality calls, I called again to cancel, was hassled by the rep for 30 minutes to continue the service, finally had to get rude with her in order to get her to cancel it. She told me I would receive a $14.95 refund under the money back guarantee policy, and instead slapped me with a $39.99 disconnect charge that I was told would not be charged to me since I was under the money back guarantee. Customer service? They don't know the meaning.
Posted by: Gina Hilton at November 15, 2006 9:01 AM
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