The Challenge

Keith Winn, IT Director and teacher at The Key, has been with the school since the beginning. When setting up the school’s phone system, he knew a traditional analog environment would not be able to handle the school’s call volume or provide the features the school needed. He also knew the school’s mission would be attractive to many and that the student body would grow, which meant The Key needed a future-proof telephony environment.

Winn had a background in setting up VoIP systems – even building some of his own PBXs – and knew his criteria when selecting the school’s business phone system vendor.

The pain points that he needed to address were:

• Scalability: The phone system must be able to grow seamlessly as the school attracts students and adds employees.
• Continuity: With anticipated high call volumes, Winn wanted assurance that no calls would be missed or dropped and that callers could easily reach their intended parties and extensions.
• Reliability: Safety is paramount in schools. The Key needed a system that would deliver remarkable uptime.
• Manageability: Since other IT projects required Winn’s attention and he was also teaching students, he needed a turnkey, managed system that was easy to deploy and oversee.

The Solution

Winn turned to a trusted IT consultant for advice when building out The Key’s IT environment. The consultant recommended Broadvoice, and Winn considered the UCaaS provider for the Key’s small business communication needs. Broadvoice, which has won awards for both its technology and its customer service, was an ideal fit for The Key.

Broadvoice delivered as promised and exceeded Winn’s expectations. In fact, to Winn’s surprise, the Broadvoice team contacted him with a cost-saving upgrade when the company launched b-hive, Broadvoice’s cloud PBX communication solution. “The cost went down, and we didn’t lose any features – we actually gained a few features,” said Winn. “It’s nice to get that call saying, ‘Hey, we could save you some money!’ When your provider calls to tell you about new features, it’s usually to upsell you and charge you more money.”

Broadvoice b-hive is designed for small and medium businesses (SMBs) like The Key, combining enterprise-class cloud PBX, UC, and virtual call center features into one platform.

The Benefits

Winn says that, in addition to cost-savings, he is benefiting through his relationship with Broadvoice in many ways, including:

• Support: Winn said Broadvoice support is responsive and quick to provide resolutions, resolving his inquiries on the first call.
• Scalability: The Key currently serves 160 students and 47 employees and will continue to grow. Broadvoice’s b-hive scales on demand, has kept pace with the school’s growth to date, and will meet all the school’s future capacity needs.
• Productivity: Included tools via b-hive Communicator provide an easy-to-use, all-in-one app for calling, video, text, collaboration, voicemail, and fax, putting essential communications within reach from any device.

The Results

Broadvoice’s turnkey, fully-managed communications solution has allowed Winn to focus on more important things—like his students. Unified communications features ensure that parent and staff calls are easily and efficiently routed to the right person the first time, regardless of device or location. The b-hive platform, which integrates those same features (voice, text, chat, video, and conferencing), also frees up the rest of the organization to focus on the school’s mission and student success.

“My favorite ‘feature’ of the system is that I never get any calls from users saying they aren’t happy with the phone system,” laughed Winn. “I love the reliability of the service and the fact that I don’t have to manage it.” As Winn predicted, The Key experiences high call volume. That’s where the phone system’s reliability “really comes into play,” he said. “It just works.”

Winn also noted that, even though The Key is a small business, Broadvoice never made them feel small. “If you’re looking for a VoIP provider, Broadvoice is the way to go,” said Winn. “I’ve been very happy with their service and recommend them to anyone.”

Do you need to streamline, scale, and future-proof communication at your company? Contact us for a demo to learn how Broadvoice solutions can help you with all this and more.