In a recent interview, Dean Schreuder, founder and MD of DSL Telecom joined an insightful discussion with Yeastar. Representing Yeastar were Jason New, Senior Training Instructor, Shirley Xie, Head Of Marketing and Elly Cai, Country Manager for Yeastar South Africa.

In this blog post, we'll explore the key points from the interview including the long-standing partnership between Yeastar and DSL Telecom and gain deeper insight into Yeastar's Cloud PBX offering and the evolving Cloud PBX market.

Yeastar: Can you provide a brief overview of DSL Telecom and how long you've been a Yeastar partner for?

Dean: Yeah, our company, DSL Telecom, we're a company based in Cape Town, South Africa, and we offer cloud-based services to business customers in South Africa predominantly, but also internationally. We've been in business for 15 years and we've been a Yeastar partner for around 13 years. We sell Cloud PBX Voice over IP services to companies, as well as connectivity: LTE, Fibre-To-The-Home, Fibre-To-The Business - these kinds of services.

Yeastar: What are your thoughts on Yeastar's progress?

Dean: Those first on-site PBX's were important because we could mix a fixed line with a better Voice over IP, give customers a taste, and obviously offer them an IP-based solution on their network. As the internet has got faster in South Africa, Yeastar's products have evolved as our needs have. If I fast forward to today, we're pretty much predominantly selling Cloud PBX.

Internet is a lot faster here. Also cloud adoption is a lot faster in South Africa. People understand paying for software as a service, and Yeastar's products have kept up with the market's requirements, actually kept ahead of them. Now, I feel it's one of the top platforms available in South Africa

Yeastar: What industry do most of your client base come from?

Dean: We service a whole range of customers - a lot a people in healthcare, services and we've got some hotels that are on our books, and anywhere from real estate to manufacturing.

Yeastar: What factors contribute to your preference for Yeastar over other options in the market?

Dean: I like Yeastar because it allows us to continue offering transparent, contract-free services, and on top of that, amazing security. But those are the things I like most about the Yeastar product, and I think that's what customers are attracted to. If I can't go on your website and get a fair understanding of what I'm going to pay within 10 to 15 minutes, I'll lose interest, and I think customers do as well.

Yeastar: Since collaborating with Yeastar, what positive changes has the collaboration with Yeastar brought to DSL Telecom?

Dean: It's hard to pinpoint a single thing, but two big changes for us were one, when we moved onto our own turnkey cloud solution. I felt like we were able to mobilise PBX's a lot faster. We were able to manage and change them better for customers, so they got a better end experience. I think that was a big turning point when we moved to our own turnkey. We've got quite a few extensions on there now, and we're growing rapidly.

A second great thing for us is being a Zoho partner. We found a lot of people moving to a CRM system, had a requirement to talk about telephony and collaboration tools etc, and communication.

Naturally, we had a lot of conversations coming out from our Zoho customers that the demand is so high. They wanted a telephony solution that could integrate into their Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk and other applications and Yeastar was very fast to market with the integration to these platforms.

We had a first-to-market advantage, I feel like we have a couple of first-to-market advantages. First IP PBX, then cloud-based with Linkus mobility, and then obviously the Zoho CRM integration with Yeastar Cloud PBX.

Those two things were really great because we had a captive market for Zoho customers, and we moved a lot of them over to Yeastar PBX. 

Yeastar: How do your perceive the Cloud PBX market?

Dean: I definitely see the Cloud PBX market growing. There's still a lot of people sitting on legacy systems and the nice thing in South Africa is the internet has moved to a point where we can support Cloud PBX even over mobile telephone networks. People are now used to paying for software as a service, where 10 years ago, people wanted to buy PBX and pay cash for it or go on some kind of finance rental or asset financing with the bank, and over time, as we've seen not just with Yeastar software as a service and our offering, but other products like the Zoho software as a service and others, people are used to that now.

Yeastar: Could you kindly share some of the most effective marketing methods you have employed?

Dean: I'm a conversion guy. I'm a lead-generation guy. Luckily, I've been focussed on generating leads through digital platforms for many years. We've got a lot of strong capabilities. We actually offer lead-generation services to some of our customers. It's not on our website, but it's a need-to-know basis. It's a unique service that we offer.

Our success has been going on to digital platforms and generating leads for our team, inbound leads, and we hand those over to our sales team. We've collaborated with some of our partners, and they've subsidised the cost of that lead acquisition and we've reciprocated by closing good business, so those partnerships have worked well.

Yeastar: How has the Yeastar Partner Program been beneficial for your team?

Dean: I think it's great. I think all the resources that are provided are fantastic, especially the certification, so I can get my team certified in the Yeastar products.

It's important that they know how to configure the systems correctly and apply the right security, so the certifications and resources have been very valuable. Then I'd say the support from the Yeastar team, it's incomparable and from a technical support point of view, fantastic.