Add-Ons Are Easy to Sell. Supporting Them Is the Real Job.

Show notes

Ten years ago, if you asked someone at an ISP what "add-ons" meant, the answer was simple: internet, TV, and phone. That was the whole menu.

I got to talk through how much that's changed with Larry Weidig and Georgette Lopez-Aguado on the latest episode of the Bandwidth Podcast, and it's a lot more than I expected to say out loud on a recording. Managed Wi-Fi. Smart home devices. Security cameras. Mobile service. Streaming bundles. Payment protection plans. Premium support. Parental controls. Managed cybersecurity. None of these are internet services in the traditional sense. They're convenience services, and customers are increasingly happy to get them from the same company that gets them online, instead of managing five or six different vendors.

That's a real shift in what an ISP actually is. And it raises a question we spent most of the episode circling: where's the line between value and clutter?

The Tier One Test

Larry's answer was the one that stuck with me most: if your tier one support staff can't support it, you shouldn't be selling it. Full stop.

It sounds obvious, but it's easy to miss in practice. Every new SKU you add doesn't just need a price and a checkout flow. Your sales team has to understand it well enough to sell it. Your support team has to be able to troubleshoot it. Marketing has to explain it. Billing has to invoice it correctly. Operations has to keep it running. The real cost of an add-on usually isn't the product itself. It's the organizational responsibility that comes with it, and that responsibility comes straight out of your margins, whether or not it's easy to see on a balance sheet.

Georgette put it a different way that I think is just as useful: every add-on should answer one question, does this make the customer's life easier. If the answer is no, don't sell it.

I'll admit I've been on the other end of this as a customer. I once got pitched device insurance that covered every electronic item in my house, and my first thought wasn't "how convenient," it was "who exactly am I calling when my laptop breaks, and are they going to know anything about my account." That gap is the clutter Larry and Georgette are describing.

You Don't Have to Build It, but You Have to Own It

Here's where I pushed back a little on the "support it in-house or don't sell it" idea, because I don't think that's quite right either. You don't necessarily have to build and support every add-on yourself. But you absolutely have to own the customer experience.

Customers don't care whether the problem technically belongs to your partner. They bought the smart home bundle from you. If it stops working, they're calling you, and they expect you to help. That means strong partner relationships, clear escalation paths, and a handoff that's actually seamless, not a phone tree that dumps the customer into a black hole the second the issue crosses a vendor line. The worst thing you can do is let the customer hear "that's actually them, not us." Whoever is at fault internally, the customer's experience has to be one continuous relationship with your brand.

That's an investment. Building those partner relationships and training your team to own the outcome, even when the underlying product isn't yours, takes real time. And time is money. But it's the difference between offering something and actually being able to stand behind it.

Stickiness and Revenue Aren't the Same Goal

We spent some time on why ISPs actually do this, and whether it's about revenue or about stickiness. My take: they're not mutually exclusive, but for most independent operators, this is really about stickiness. Managed Wi-Fi creates recurring revenue, sure, but it also means the ISP owns more of what the customer experiences day to day, which makes support easier and the relationship stronger. Mobile service adds revenue, but it also makes switching providers a genuine hassle for the customer, in a good way if it's paired with a service they actually value.

The important distinction is between stickiness that comes from value and stickiness that comes from a contract you can't get out of. If a customer would sign up for your bundle again tomorrow, that's a healthy business. If they're staying because the termination fee makes leaving too expensive, that's not stickiness, it's just delayed churn with extra resentment attached.

We got into this directly in our "love it or hate it" segment on bundling as a form of customer lock-in. I landed on hating that framing, not because bundles are bad, but because bundling should be about stacking value, not about making it harder to leave. Netflix doesn't retain subscribers by making cancellation difficult. People stay because the value is still there. That's the model I want ISPs building toward.

So Is the Triple Play Actually Dead?

This is the one where I was the odd one out on the panel. Larry and Georgette both voted that the traditional triple play concept is outdated. I voted that it isn't, and I'll stand by it, with a caveat: the components have changed, but the concept hasn't.

Yesterday's triple play was internet, TV, and phone. Tomorrow's might be internet, managed Wi-Fi, and a smart home package, or internet paired with AI-powered customer support built into the plan. The idea of bundling a core connectivity service with a couple of complementary offerings the customer actually wants isn't going away. What has to go away is the rigid assumption that those three things are permanently internet, cable TV, and a landline. If you're still marketing a triple play like it's 2015, that's the part that needs to be thrown out, not the concept of bundling itself.

What I Hope Operators Take From This

The line that's stuck with me since we recorded is one I said myself and immediately worried was too on the nose: every product you add becomes part of your brand. Customers don't separate the ISP from the partners behind the scenes. If a bundled product performs poorly, they blame you, not the vendor you white-labeled it from.

So the question worth asking before you add anything to the menu isn't "can we sell this." It's "will this make our customer trust us more six months from now." If the answer is yes, it's probably worth offering. If it isn't, even a profitable add-on can end up costing you more in reputation than it ever generates in revenue.

That's the add-on economy in a sentence: it's not about how many things you can sell. It's about how many of them your customers are glad you sold them.

Listen to the Full Episode

Catch the full conversation on the Bandwidth podcast.

Available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the Bandwidth YouTube Channel.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation.