Customer Spotlight: Continental Siding Supply
By Taylor Cates, Director of Sales and Laren Landgren, Agent Manager at Avid Communications.
We appreciate the referrals we get from our agents and trusted partners! Salvus TG is an Avid Agent. One of their defining statements is, “Everyone Fixes Computers, But We Support People.” This lines up with the way we do business with our customers.
Salvus TG brought us to the table to help their client Continental Siding Supply implement a new business phone system and faster internet. Continental Siding’s headquarters is in Independence, Missouri and they have satellite offices in Columbia, Missouri and Wichita, Kansas.
Better Business Internet
The customer had previously been running on an old premise-based Avaya phone system and their internet was made up of cable modems, an MPLS connection and T-1 lines. The MPLS was slow and expensive and as a result of re-engineering their network (courtesy of Salvus TG) they were able to remove the MPLS entirely. They now rely on dedicated fiber from Avid at their headquarters and faster connections at their satellite offices.
Better Business Phones
We moved Continental Siding off an old Avaya, premise based PBX (the stack of old handsets in the photo) to Avid’s hosted VoIP business phone offering. This resulted in a bunch of great new features for our client. These included three digit extension dialing between all 3 locations. This makes it feel like everyone is right down the hallway even though they might be in another office in another city. We implemented soft-phone technology for better connectivity on the go. And we automated their day and night call flow (they used to have to manually put their phones on night mode). We also set up integration between the phone system and their warehouse overhead paging. All they have to do is press the PA button as programmed on their phones to do an overhead announcement.
Training Matters
A team of Avid techs and representatives provided the training on the new phone system. While Taylor was doing on-site training at the main location, Laren was using Accession Communicator Meeting to host virtual training for the remote locations at the same time. Nice.
Caution: It’s Easy to Build a House of Cards
As a business grows over time, it’s easy to end up with complications in the way things are set up. Sometimes, it’s easier to bolt something on for a specific need rather than redesigning an entire system. We hit a snag like this during the project. Some of the phone numbers that the client used for marketing purposes weren’t ported over. It took some digging to figure out who even had control of the phone numbers to start the process of getting them ported.
It can take up to 2 weeks to port a number based on the request, agreement, actual changing of the settings, etc. So it’s important to get ahead of this and know the range of phone numbers you have for your business. Whether that’s the main line or a collection of marketing related phone numbers. The client assumed their pool of business phone numbers were all in the same place, and they weren’t. (We got things cleaned up quickly for them.)
Getting More for Less.
Based on the design of the new systems and the technologies used, Continental Siding is getting a better business phone system and business internet for less than they were paying per month previously. High fives all around.
We’re excited to add Continental Siding to our list of happy clients! If you’re in the market for better business internet or an upgraded business phone system, give us a call! And we really appreciate Salvus TG bringing us in to help deliver a comprehensive solution for their customer. (If you’re interested in the Avid Agent Program, get in touch with Laren Landgren, our Agent Manager.)
