By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

Two years ago, Joel Maloff was brought in to work for Phone (News - Alert).com to create the company’s channel partner program, and he has been managing it ever since. Phone.com is a cloud-based phone company that offers a variety of innovative business and home phone services for entrepreneurs, home offices, small businesses and individuals.

“I personally believe it’s very important that we not be just another internet dial tone provider, and rather, a provider of wide-reaching solutions to small businesses,” said Maloff.

Today, Maloff sat down with TMCnet at ITEXPO Austin 2012 to discuss how far Phone.com has come, what the company has in store for the future and how much Maloff values attending ITEXPO (News - Alert) each year.

At ITEXPO this year, he is primarily here to network, but he also has another important role to fill. He has been involved with Ingate for the past five years at ITEXPO. The last year and half he was a moderator for various discussions, but this time, the President of Ingate was unable to attend. So, Maloff is hosting the entire Ingate session.

Every year at ITEXPO, Maloff and Phone.com (News - Alert) are very pleased with the quality of the exhibitors, the speakers as well as the variety of attendees. “I have participated in other conferences in the past where only three people have been there. At the Ingate sessions at ITEXPO there are about 300 people in the room – that’s worthwhile,” explained Maloff.

Phone.com works to educate small businesses and be active rather than reactive. Hundreds of companies do what Phone.com does, however, it is different because it has an excellent record in customer service, all US-based employees, and one of the measures Phone.com uses to determine customer churn is a portal of numbers.

“The last I heard it was 14 to 1 in favor, which tells us that once we get customers, they stay with us. That’s a credit to the way we package our services, deliver them and respond to people,” he said. “We haven’t gotten so big that we have lost sight of our customers and we will hold onto that for our future.”

Due to its overall success, recently, Phone.com has made some major accomplishments that the company is very proud of.

In August, Phone.com was recognized by Inc. Magazine at number 262 in their 2012 Inc. 500 list, which is an “amazing accomplishment,” according to Maloff.

“The phone service market is extremely competitive and yet still very exciting. Growth in our industry and Phone.com specifically is based on innovative services incorporating new technologies and new developments,” said Ari Rabban (News - Alert), CEO & CO-founder of Phone.com, in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to serve our growing and loyal customer base with an eye towards innovation, quality and value.”

Additionally, Phone.com understands that businesses require multiple vehicles for communication, so the company has recently expanded the features available via its Virtual Office cloud-based business phone services to include the Communicator “softphone.”  

Communicator is a Windows and Mac OS X application that is installed on a computer and emulates a traditional phone dialer. With Communicator, businesspeople can place or receive calls just as they would through any desk or mobile phone by using a laptop or desktop computer with a microphone, headset or speakers. To use Communicator, businesses must have a Phone.com Virtual Office account and will need to add a Communicator extension to their service. Communicator is a free download for Phone.com customers.

Looking to the future, Phone.com will still be focusing in small business, but will expand its scope to about two to 50 employees in a business, continuing to innovate new products and new services.

To find out more about Joel Maloff (News - Alert) and Phone.com, visit the company at ITEXPO. Taking place now, Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. Maloff is speaking during “Selling VoIP and Unified Communications via Channel Partners”. For more information on ITEXPO, click here.