Bay Area Unified School District
School District Hits an Out-of-the-Park HomeRun with RingCentral’s Reliability and Professional Services
The RingCentral team was here holding our hands the whole time, helping us learn a lot of information in a very short time.
The RingCentral administrator
Bay Area unified school district
A reliable communications system is not simply a business necessity for a school. It has become an increasingly important safety requirement. “In a school environment, poor performance of the communications system is unacceptable,” says the school district’s Google and RingCentral administrator.
The RingCentral administrator speaks from her experience. Dropped calls with the previous communications system frustrated teachers, administrators, and staff, and its downtime potentially put safety at risk. Frustrations spilled over onto the IT department. “People were losing faith in us because they were lumping us with the poor performance of the old phone vendor,” the RingCentral administrator says.
The unified school district team had several critical requirements for their new communications system. The first was reliability. For them, that was even more important than price, and simple verbal assurance wouldn’t do. The team wanted to see proof of uptime. Second, the new system had to be compatible with Google since the district had standardized on Google for Education apps, and future plans included an initiative to give every student a Chromebook.
The unified school district had a third requirement that didn’t involve communications functionality directly, but did pose a challenge to potential vendors. The new system would have to be deployed across the entire organization during a six-week summer break.
Solid metrics, G Suite integration, and RingCentral Professional Services™ seal the deal
The unified school district started with a list of 20 unified communications vendors, and quickly whittled it down to five and then to one. “Fairly early on, they choose RingCentral because it had the metrics to prove its uptime,” the RingCentral administrator explained. “Also, since RingCentral is a preferred Google partner, that fit with our current and future plans.”
Understanding the high stakes, RingCentral Professional Services had six people on-site for six weeks to deploy RingCentral and provide training for the administrator and staff. “The RingCentral team was here holding our hands the whole time, helping us learn a lot of information in a very short time,” says the RingCentral administrator. “We couldn’t have any do-overs again. We needed an out-of-the-park home run, and with RingCentral we got it. I’m very pleased and so are my users.”
The RingCentral administrator saw an immediate change in the number of support tickets she manages. “I was doing hundreds and hundreds of support tickets per week with the previous system,” the RingCentral administrator says. “Now all I do [related to the communications system] is give out and reassign numbers.”
INDUSTRY
Education
HQ
N/A
YEAR FOUNDED
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EMPLOYEES
1,700+ teachers,
administrators,
and other staff.
RingCentral increases productivity in multiple ways
In addition to providing the reliable communications functionality the district required, RingCentral is helping everyone work more efficiently. For example, secretaries who manage phone traffic for hundreds of extensions now have RingCentral Auto-Receptionist, a virtual receptionist, to automatically route calls for them. In addition, the RingCentral head-up display (HUD) lets them handle all communications tasks directly from their computer screens. “Secretaries saw a 10% increase in productivity right off the bat,” the RingCentral administrator says. “The head-up display gives them so much more information than their phone screens can.”
Other productivity gains come from RingEX™ online conferencing, which the district is using for developing individual education plans (IEPs) for special needs students. IEPs require the collaboration of lawyers, social workers, teachers, and parents. RingEX lets them work face-to-face online and share documents in real time from the convenience of their offices. Similarly, the district holds monthly “Birds of a Feather” meetings for groups of employees—clerks, secretaries, principals, etc.—from all 28 campuses. These meetings can now be held virtually rather than having everyone make their way through Bay Area traffic.
The integration of RingCentral with Google is another productivity booster because it eliminates the need to jump between applications. For example, employees can set up RingEX directly from within Google calendar. If they’re working with a Microsoft Word document, they can fax it using RingCentral Fax® without leaving the document.
Overall, RingCentral has transformed the district’s frustrated end users to people who love their communications system. “On a one-to-ten happiness scale, RingCentral is a 20,” says the RingCentral administrator. “I love RingCentral because you really help us solve problems.”
On a one-to-ten happiness scale, RingCentral is a 20. I love RingCentral because you really help us solve problems.
The RingCentral administrator
Bay Area unified school district