For a few years now I’ve been looking and longing for the perfect online phone/PBX system. Something that brings all of your calling and system needs into a single system at an affordable price. I’ve tried a number of them like UReach, Ring Central and Google Voice (which I wrote about previously). I’ve looked at dozens and dozens of systems.
The biggest problem is finding something that has the features of a Google Voice, but the power of a traditional PBX system (voice mail, auto attendant, extensions, ring to cell, etc.) yet doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. There are plenty of options out there, but I have yet to find one that suits the typical small business needs like mine.
Until last week.
Shoemoney had a post about Toktumi and their virtual PBX (read the full post here: Toktumi – Seriously Awesome Business Applications). He’d been trying it for a few weeks and was really happy. What’s more, they had just released a sweet iPhone app that let you use a second number assigned to your cell phone as an originating number. This means you could be on your iPhone, call a client, colleague, vendor or whoever, and have the number that came through on the receiving end be your office number. That’s amazing!
On top of all this, you could pick a local or 800 number, use a basic virtual PBX for extensions with an auto attendant, etc. This was perfect. Price was only $14.95 per month and Shoe had a coupon code for the first 3 months for free. I signed up the night I read the post. My only concern being they were a new company and I didn’t want to lose a number my customers had for me if the company went out of business, but I figured I could get around that.
Signup, unfortunately, is where my excitement ended. The process was pretty easy, but several of the options were confusing as to the cost and what you actually got with them. After realizing I had made a mistake during the signup, I immediately contacted support through their ticket system. This was last Thursday. I didn’t hear back until Saturday. Bummer.
After some going back and forth on the confusing charges incurred from the setup process, I finally called support on Tuesday. The person on the other end sounded a bit put off (perhaps just stressed from a big growth spurt as a result of the Shoemoney.com mention), but reasonably helpful in the end. We figured out a solution which was me simply choosing another number. I sent her that within 10 minutes of our call.
I didn’t hear back again after 2 more emails and 3 days passing. Finally today I called and left a message. About 30 minutes later I get an email apologizing and saying they had canceled my account for me. Course that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be a CUSTOMER.
I give you that whole story to make a couple of points. First, be aware of what you’re getting into if you sign up for Toktumi. At this point, don’t expect solid customer service. Seems like a great service, but unfortunately I was left with a bad feeling about how their support would perform were I really in need of it.
Second, pay attention to customer support ESPECIALLY when your product or service is new. It’s a direct reflection on your company as a whole and the solidity of your service.
Toktumi was handed a pretty sweet gift with a Shoemoney.com post that I’m sure reaped them some great rewards, but they blew it with me by providing poor customer support, by a person that made me feel like I was a nuisance to her, then sealing the deal by basically saying “we don’t want you as a customer” when they canceled my account rather than just changing my number. I was fully ready to start using Toktumi as my PBX for 2 businesses. Once I start using services like that, I rarely change because it’s a pain in the butt. That’s long term revenue. The worst part for them is we were SOOOOO close to having things resolved.
Just some food for thought for your Friday. Feel free to check out Toktumi here: Toktumi.com. Just don’t tell them I sent you! 
UPDATE: I received an email from the CEO of Toktumi. I decided to write up a little update post here: UPDATE: My Experiences With Toktumi.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Thanks for the wonderful details you got there.. Got an answer from here.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:49 am
@ Peter Sisson, thank you..i understand now why i experience the same..i hope it will be back to normal soon..good luck
October 9th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I first time heard about Toktumi. I think it's really good business application. I'll check out. Thanks.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Very greats information… thanks my friends..:)
October 15th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Thanks for sharing your Experience with us, and very great information you provide.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:41 am
“Good post. I thought to let you know that ur site looks a bit messed up in the Camino 2 web browser.”
October 29th, 2009 at 10:25 am
I also want to try this application, from where i can get this one!
November 4th, 2009 at 8:18 am
I'm having problems with the auto attendant, can you write an article regarding this?
November 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I have been using my FREE TRIAL for the past week (which took me all of 3 minutes to sign up for) and putting it through the paces. In every case my test worked out flawlessly even TREEING multiple accounts together into a seamless multi layered system like one may have at a support company. Voice quality is always good and the system never messed up once except when human error occured. I will be upgrading my initial trial to a full account at the end of the trial.
For those of you wanting to try it out you can go to the origional toktumi dot com site and signup and see for yourself.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I had a bit of a disappointing experience with Toktumi that I think is worth sharing. The company claims "There are no hidden charges and all taxes are included" yet buries this in the fine print of the Terms of Use: "Inbound Calls that are immediately forwarded to an outside number (except via the auto-attendant or announce feature) in excess of 2,000 minutes per month will be billed at 2c per minute." I spent $40 signing up for the service and a number port before I realized this and canceled. They still charged me for the month and porting even though I never used it. Granted, I guess I should have read the terms of service before I signed up, but I read the FAQ and believed that there were truly no hidden charges. I can't comment on the service itself b/c I never got to use it. The support person usually got back to me within a day or two so that issue appears to have been cleared up. Use at your own risk…
November 21st, 2009 at 11:19 am
very informative post.
thanks so much.
December 4th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
[...] another try. You can read my original post and the excellent response from the Toktumi CEO here: My Experiences With Toktumi & UPDATE: My Experiences With [...]
December 29th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Toktumi are really amazing ones…
January 4th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
That sucks but may be they were just too busy and stressed. Just because Shoemoney recommends them, I might give it a go.. but yeah, try them for a few days before you use it, check their customer service etc. and if you think they're good enough, go ahead. This applies to most of the services, I never hurry things up.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:05 am
who can give me toktumi account?
February 17th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
I've had toktumi for about a year. It was great in the beginning. Now I can't use my phone to dial out since the new soft ware update. When I use their service that I can access through my cell phone I cannot make calls out. Toktumi can't give me a time line when they will fix the problems. I'm now looking into another service because I think the next problem to come up is my customers not being able to reach me. I can use my cell to call my customer but if the customer has call block I will have to show my cell number which I prefer to keep private. I recommend people think twice before going with this service.