Marcus Richards
Invoco provides telecom solutions to businesses. Specialising in Call Tracking, Virtual Numbers, Hosted Telephony, and Broadband, our aim is to be the supplier of choice to the SME market by offering solutions tailored to small businesses, paired with incredible value for money and fantastic customer service.
Tell us about yourself?
I’ve worked in telecoms my whole life, starting in London, then Germany, and now I’m living in Birmingham with my family. I founded Invoco in 2002 and we haven’t looked back since!
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Delegate more! We have a great team that are more than capable of anything I throw at them.
What problem does your business solve?
We want to make sure every small and medium business in the UK has the perfect, most tailored telecoms solution for them, whether that be a virtual number directed to a builders mobile to give them a more professional image whilst they’re on the road, or a fully fledged phone system for a team to divert calls anywhere in the world, teamed with our Invoco broadband.
Our call tracking numbers also give anyone doing any marketing the insight they need into whether their campaigns are truly effective or not.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I’ve been working in the telecoms industry for over 25 years, many of which were spent working for the big telecom companies, so it wasn’t until I set up Invoco in 2002 that I experienced what it was like to be a business customer on the other side of the fence.
Talk about frustrating! Slow to respond. Expensive. Locked into inflexible, long-term contracts. And poor customer service to boot! Exactly what a startup business doesn’t need. And unfortunately, things are still the same now.
So after years of providing systems to other telecoms companies and getting exasperated at how they were letting down their customers, we decided we would try and do things differently. Really differently.
My aim was simple: to create the kind of telecom company that I would want to be a customer of. It would have great customer service (obviously!) with no off-shore call centers. It would offer flexible contract-free services so I only paid for what I needed, when I needed it, so the service could grow with my business.
Oh, and it would also give small businesses the kind of services that the big corporates use in their businesses such as advanced call management, call recording, CRM integrations, online dashboards, sales leaderboards, etc., so my business could be more productive and more importantly, serve our customers better.
What is your magic sauce?
Definitely our team. We have any entirely UK based support team that will pick up the phone as soon as it rings – so any problem is worked on straight away, rather than a long winded call queue, an unfriendly engineer and no promise of a solution.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Growth! We’re slowly taking on more staff, expanding our services and growing our customer numbers… but there’s room for more!
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Keeping up with product development in our industry. But we’re getting there!
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We’d love to help any business with any requirements in the UK. If you think you deserve better from your current provider, you probably do! If you’re interested, visit our website https://www.invoco.net, email us at [email protected]t or give us a call on 01527 306 000.
