PressOne grew quickly. Then it had to figure out why customers were leaving

When Mayowa Okegbenle started PressOne, the problem was easy to understand. Small businesses were using personal mobile numbers to deal with customers. That works when a business is small. But once there are several employees answering calls, it becomes difficult to know who spoke to a customer, what was discussed and what happens to those customer relationships when an employee leaves. Okegbenle had experienced the problem himself. In 2019, while running another business, he was using his personal number for work. He did not have a way to monitor employee calls or keep control of customer conversations. 

So he built his own system. That eventually became PressOne, the Lagos-based cloud telephony company he co-founded with Opeyemi Shokunbi. The company gives businesses a phone system that can be managed from one place. They can have a business number, automated greetings, extensions for employees, call routing and records of customer interactions. The idea was to give smaller businesses something that had generally been used by banks and larger companies. And businesses signed up. The problem came later.

Customers were signing up, then leaving

PressOne went live in July 2022. Customer numbers grew quickly. At some points, when the company increased its promotional spending, it was bringing in as many as 500 customers a week. But the number of customers coming in did not tell the whole story. Some businesses would register, set up their number and then leave the following month. Others signed up because of promotions but did not use the service regularly. 

So PressOne had a customer acquisition problem, but it was not the one it first thought it had. It could get businesses onto the platform. Keeping them there was harder. “In 2022, in terms of just pure numbers of customers, it was a peak year,” Okegbenle said. “But then, as they came, they left. So that’s a churn problem.” That also made the business more expensive to run. PressOne is not selling software that costs almost nothing to operate once a customer signs up. Every account needs a phone number. Calls have to move across telecom networks. There are carrier and interconnection costs, and the company's servers have to handle those calls.So a customer who signs up and leaves after one month can cost the company money without generating enough revenue to cover that cost.

The price had to change too

PressOne's monthly subscription price started at about ₦1,500. It later increased to around ₦6,000 and eventually settled at roughly ₦10,000. Part of the reason was the cost of providing the service. Okegbenle said the company cannot treat its marginal cost per customer as zero because there are real telecom costs attached to every account. That is different from the way many software businesses operate. With PressOne, the customer is using an actual communications network every time they make or receive a call. The company also had to think about its infrastructure costs. Okegbenle said local cloud infrastructure can be more expensive and less flexible than using large international cloud providers. For a young company trying to keep its costs under control, that matters.

The first three days started telling PressOne a lot

By 2024, PressOne changed how it looked at new customers. It started paying closer attention to what businesses did during their first 72 hours. A customer who added employees, set up call-routing rules and started making calls was more likely to stay. A customer who registered but did very little was more likely to leave. Okegbenle said the company could identify likely long-term customers from those first three days. That gave PressOne a better way of deciding where to spend its money. Instead of simply asking how many customers it could acquire, it could look at whether those customers were actually using the service. That became important as the company worked towards profitability.

Then there is the problem PressOne cannot control

Even if PressOne's software is working properly, the call still depends on a telecom network. And that can be a problem in Nigeria. PressOne tracks how often calls successfully connect across different routes. Okegbenle said some routes have recorded weekly success rates of around 48%, while the company's baseline has often been between 30% and 31%. He compared that with South Africa, where call setup success rates for major operators can range between 91% and 98%, and India, where the average is above 90%. 

For a business that relies on calls, a failed connection can mean a customer has to call again or simply gives up. PressOne therefore has to monitor different routes and have alternatives available. The company allows businesses to switch between numbers and carrier networks depending on network performance. It is a similar reason why businesses often keep SIM cards from more than one mobile network. If one network is having problems, there is another option.

PressOne is now building for other technology companies

The company is also preparing to launch Signals, its programmable telephony API. The product is aimed at developers, fintech companies, enterprises and AI companies that want to add voice calls to their services. PressOne says Signals is connected to six major telecom networks and can handle up to five million calls a day. A logistics company could use the system to call a customer about a delivery. A software company could use it to make automated calls. An AI company could use it to build voice interactions without having to set up its own telecom connections. This is a different customer from the small businesses PressOne started with. Instead of selling a phone system directly to a business, PressOne can provide the telecom infrastructure that another technology company uses inside its own product.

PressOne says it is now profitable

PressOne says it has reached profitability after changing how it approaches customer acquisition, pricing and costs. The company learned that having a lot of customers was not enough. It needed customers who stayed. It also needed to charge enough to cover the cost of providing phone numbers, telecom connections and the infrastructure needed to keep calls running. That is where the business has changed since those early weeks when it could sign up hundreds of customers. The company now has another product to grow through Signals. Whether that becomes a larger business than its original SME service will depend on how many companies are willing to build voice into their own products. For PressOne, the focus has shifted from simply getting businesses to sign up to making sure the service is something they keep paying for.