Customer Spotlight: Johnston Fiss Insurance Company
By Mark Lindsay, Account Executive at Avid Communications.
Johnston Fiss is an insurance company located in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. They’ve been a customer of Avid Communications since 2013.
I wanted to share a little bit more about their company and the recent project we helped them with: updating their phone system! This is a great example of a long term client that we’ve been able to help transition through multiple technology changes. The great thing is that they’re able to take advantage of new features as each change happens.
Johnston Fiss started working with Avid for business internet.
Their first connection was a T1 line, and then a cable modem. Google Fiber became available, so they transitioned everything to Google Fiber in 2016 (keeping the cable modem as a backup, for redundancy. We have both connections set up in their firewall, and their network will fail over to the cable modem if the primary Google Fiber connection goes down.)
Things have been working well for Johnston Fiss for a long time. We received a call from Bunny, their office manager. She was proactively calling to see what new features might be available for their phone system.
Their previous phone system was an on-premise system that was located in the basement of their building. We learned that the system was no longer in warranty, and the vendor that sold them the system was no longer in business. They didn’t know who to call, so they called us because we were already doing a great job providing business internet access.
It was time to upgrade their on-premise phone system to a hosted VoIP business phone system from Avid.
We recently installed their new VoIP business phone system. I loved taking the picture of Bunny’s new phone in an Easter basket full of eggs. Appropriate timing, right?
We completed the project on-site in just two hours, with no disruption to their phones. We started by installing the receptionist’s phone first so that she could route calls or take a message while other phones were being replaced. (This was a transition from PRI to fully hosted VoIP phones… we already controlled their numbers so we didn’t have to deal with porting numbers.)
Two of their staff members use the soft phone app on their smart phones. (It’s a piece of software instead of a physical phone.) This allows them to use their cell phones as their work phone… but sends their work phone number through caller ID instead of their actual cell phone number.
As the techs swapped out the phones, I did phone training with two groups of ten people and then another session of training with the owners. One of their favorite new features is one-button transfers to other team members. Their old system required multiple button presses to accomplish a transfer.
There was a remote worker in Texas. We mailed them a phone that was per-configured, so all they had to do was plug it into their internet jack and it started working. That employee also had a phone at the office in Kansas City, so we set their business number to ring both phones for incoming calls.
We’ve really enjoyed doing another project with Bunny and Johnston Fiss Insurance.
Bunny was really helpful in providing the names of employees and making sure we had everything ready to go for project installation and training! We look forward to supporting their business internet and business phone system for years to come… as well as more technologies as they become available!
More about Johnston Fiss Insurance Company
Johnston Fiss Insurance is a second generation independent insurance agency that has been providing service to their clients for over 50 years. They take pride in their long term partnerships with clients and insurance carriers.
Learn More at the Johnson Fiss website.
