With a business communication environment consisting of standard landline phones, and field service technicians using their own smartphones on the road, Advantage’s management team knew they weren’t operating as efficiently as they could.
Steve Trompler, the company’s IT manager, shares one example. “We use an answering service for after-hours calls, primarily for emergency requests, and we pay by the call,” he says. “Because we didn’t have an automated menu to direct callers to voicemail for non-emergencies, people
calling after-hours would wait to speak with an operator even for questions about billing or whether we could handle a certain type of service. That got very expensive for us.”
Operations Manager Macy Sorrell-Devereaux offers another example of how Advantage’s phone system undermined productivity and even the customer experience. The company’s technicians, Macy explains, use their own cell phones in the field, and Advantage’s standard process is for the techs to call ahead and let customers know when they’re on their way to the jobsite.
“Because customers didn’t recognize our techs’ mobile numbers, about 50% of the time they just wouldn’t answer,” says Macy. “That triggered about four calls to finally reach the customer. The tech would try them a couple of times first, then call the office, and finally someone in the office would call the customer to let them know the tech was on the way. It was inefficient, took time from our team in the office, and didn’t create a very good customer experience.”