Voxox / Telcentris (VoxDirect)
It was being built as a virtual phone system. Customers just wanted their answering machine to work.
The roadmap was chasing feature parity with business-phone platforms. Direct customer outreach found a simpler, better-fit product underneath.
Where things stood
VoxDirect was being built and positioned as a virtual phone system for small businesses, adding features to compete head-on with established business-phone platforms.
The call
The obvious move was to keep adding virtual-phone-system features to close the gap with established platforms. I set that aside after running customer outreach directly. Most prospective users were not shopping for a phone system. They wanted the job an answering machine does, done as a modern app: simple, consumer and small-business focused, without the configuration overhead of an enterprise phone tool. I repositioned the product and rebuilt the feature set around that narrower, better-fit use case instead of the original one.
What got built
- Ran direct customer outreach that surfaced the actual job customers were hiring the product to do
- Repositioned VoxDirect from a virtual-phone-system competitor to a simple, modern answering-machine replacement for consumers and small businesses
- Led product and development on the rebuilt feature set: drip campaign automation, logic-flow builders and AI chat, scoped to the simplified use case
- Rebuilt the direct-purchase funnel and messaging around the new positioning
Results
300%
growth in direct-to-consumer sales under the repositioned product, with a 40% increase in average order value
Scope
Director of Marketing and Product Innovation. Owned the customer research, repositioning, and product and go-to-market for VoxDirect.
Build and present clear strategies to leaders that help ensure a brand remains relevant.
Ed Mallory · CEO, Voxox / Telcentris
now: CEO, Ring4.com