New England Biolabs
Why a Top Biotech Firm, with Great Customer Service in its DNA, Chose RingCentral
![[new-england-biolabs] logo](/content/dam/rc-www/en_us/images/content/whyringcentral/casestudies/new-england-biolabs/4_new_england_biolabs.jpg)
We had a choice: Pay to add capacity or upgrade an aging phone system and manage it in-house or put everything in the cloud. It became clear as we continued to research options that by going with a RingCentral solution was the best decision.
Larry Primatello
Manager of Infrastructure Operations, New England Biolabs
A biotech industry leader with customer love in its DNA
For a company whose products have helped enable such significant contributions to medical research, biotechnology, and other scientific endeavors, New England Biolabs® (NEB®) is driven by a surprisingly low-tech company philosophy that can be distilled down to three core values: passion, humility and being genuine.
One common point of pride you’ll hear when you speak to the staff of NEB, for example, is that when customers call the company, they will reach a live person and not just a maze of automated greetings and options. In fact, the company has built a unique call-center operation to connect customers who have technical questions about NEB products with the scientists who’ve helped develop or manufacture those products, or customer service representatives that can assist with orders and billing questions.
This commitment to outstanding service helps explain why NEB has become one of the world’s most sought-after suppliers of cutting-edge technologies used in gene expression, synthetic biology, RNA analysis, and molecular diagnostics. Customers around the world—from geneticists to medical researchers, to scientists at pharmaceutical firms—know that when they need help with an NEB product, they can always reach a scientific expert at the company.
In 2018, NEB’s growth led the company to start planning on the expansion of the company headquarters facility. With the prospect of equipping the office expansion with communications infrastructure, NEB’s IT team had to reexamine their plans for the company’s aging phone system.
One common point of pride you’ll hear when you speak to the staff of NEB, for example, is that when customers call the company, they will reach a live person and not just a maze of automated greetings and options. In fact, the company has built a unique call-center operation to connect customers who have technical questions about NEB products with the scientists who’ve helped develop or manufacture those products, or customer service representatives that can assist with orders and billing questions.
This commitment to outstanding service helps explain why NEB has become one of the world’s most sought-after suppliers of cutting-edge technologies used in gene expression, synthetic biology, RNA analysis, and molecular diagnostics. Customers around the world—from geneticists to medical researchers, to scientists at pharmaceutical firms—know that when they need help with an NEB product, they can always reach a scientific expert at the company.
In 2018, NEB’s growth led the company to start planning on the expansion of the company headquarters facility. With the prospect of equipping the office expansion with communications infrastructure, NEB’s IT team had to reexamine their plans for the company’s aging phone system.
Managing their phone system had become a real science project
Given how central customer service is to New England Biolabs’ business model, managing the company’s call center with an extremely old, on-premises phone system was becoming a challenge. Larry Primatello, Manager of Infrastructure Operations, explains that the upcoming office expansion project sped up a decision the company was going to have to make soon anyway.
“We were running our communications through a 2003 phone system that had already been upgraded a few times. Every so often we’d run low of capacity, as the company grew, and we’d have to buy more. But we were nearing the point when the provider would no longer even offer expansion for the current system without having to make a significant investment in a platform technology forklift upgrade.”
Larry also notes that, for the few support agents who occasionally worked remotely, the IT team had set up a separate VPN infrastructure for those employees to access the company’s voice network. “But that process was inconsistent and unreliable because of the complexities with the setup.”
So, Larry and his team investigated cloud communications options—deciding it would be smarter to implement a solution that wouldn’t require the need to have on-premises equipment and enable remote worker connectivity for anyone in the company. After the team vetted several of the key players in the industry, they found RingCentral to be the standout.
“We were running our communications through a 2003 phone system that had already been upgraded a few times. Every so often we’d run low of capacity, as the company grew, and we’d have to buy more. But we were nearing the point when the provider would no longer even offer expansion for the current system without having to make a significant investment in a platform technology forklift upgrade.”
Larry also notes that, for the few support agents who occasionally worked remotely, the IT team had set up a separate VPN infrastructure for those employees to access the company’s voice network. “But that process was inconsistent and unreliable because of the complexities with the setup.”
So, Larry and his team investigated cloud communications options—deciding it would be smarter to implement a solution that wouldn’t require the need to have on-premises equipment and enable remote worker connectivity for anyone in the company. After the team vetted several of the key players in the industry, they found RingCentral to be the standout.
Our customer service sets us apart, with our scientists taking support calls. RingCentral is helping us make that service better than ever.
Larry Primatello
Manager of Infrastructure Operations, New England Biolabs
INDUSTRY
Biotech
HQ
Ipswich, MA
YEAR FOUNDED
1974
EMPLOYEES
650+
The cloud-based RingCentral worked flawlessly from day one
The most memorable thing about NEB’s rollout of RingCentral was how uneventful the migration was. As Larry explains, his IT team started by deploying the solution at NEB’s Australia offices and testing their ability to communicate with the staff at the company’s Massachusetts headquarters.
“The Australia-to-HQ trial was literally as far across the world as I could run a real-world test of the RingCentral platform,” he says. “It worked flawlessly. So that’s when we really felt comfortable about moving forward with RingCentral and proceed with a plan to implement as our global telecommunications platform.”
“The Australia-to-HQ trial was literally as far across the world as I could run a real-world test of the RingCentral platform,” he says. “It worked flawlessly. So that’s when we really felt comfortable about moving forward with RingCentral and proceed with a plan to implement as our global telecommunications platform.”
Delivering the support their customers deserve… even during COVID
NEB’s customer-support managers, who schedule the rotating teams of scientists and customer service agents appreciate how easy it is with RingCentral to set up, adjust, and monitor those call queues.
And because RingCentral integrates with our CRM platform, NEB’s scientists and customer service agents are able to create an even better experience for customers calling in. “The caller’s info pops up on the screen when the call comes in,” says Larry. “Our scientists can address the person by name, mention the product they’ve bought, and ask how they can help with it.”
And because RingCentral integrates with our CRM platform, NEB’s scientists and customer service agents are able to create an even better experience for customers calling in. “The caller’s info pops up on the screen when the call comes in,” says Larry. “Our scientists can address the person by name, mention the product they’ve bought, and ask how they can help with it.”
Thanks to the RingCentral integration with our CRM platform, our support experience is so much more personal now than we were able to make it before.
Larry Primatello
Manager of Infrastructure Operations, New England Biolabs
But RingCentral proved even more valuable when the COVID-19 lockdowns forced NEB’s staff to vacate their offices and work from home. “That was the most amazing thing about RingCentral up at that point in time,” recalls Larry. “The transition to remote work was virtually seamless.”
He adds: “I hate to imagine what would’ve happened if we had to get everyone working from home if we still had the old on-premises phone system.”
He adds: “I hate to imagine what would’ve happened if we had to get everyone working from home if we still had the old on-premises phone system.”
We consider ourselves so lucky that we rolled out RingCentral when we did. It helped us get through the lockdowns seamlessly.
Larry Primatello
Manager of Infrastructure Operations, New England Biolabs