Cloud-Based Communications Platforms Require Not Only Great Features, But Great Service

Most businesses today engage in some kind of multichannel communications. (Even 100 years ago, a company could choose telegraph OR postal mail.) Some businesses, however, require a more robust multichannel communications environment that makes it easy to mix and match voice, video, text and chat, plus document sharing. There are few companies that have broader telecom needs than a creative media agency that lives on presenting impressive, often video-based content to prospective customers. Obviously, a slow or unreliable communications platform could put a serious dent in business…who would run with an agency that doesn’t even have the technology to cope with its own sales pitches?

Rather than stringing together a series of separate solutions and apps – and crossing their fingers and hoping they work together – many companies are getting serious about the cloud-based communications solutions they purchase. Business communications solutions provider Nextiva recent shared a case study about a customer, Atlanta-based Blue Marble Media, which produces film and motion graphics presentations. The company has clients all over the world, and according to Creative Director and Principal Cara Barineau, their analog phone system simply wasn’t enabling them to interact with clients in the way they required. The company’s first switch to a voice over IP platform was unsuccessful: the provider simply didn’t offer the kind of support a company with complex communications needs requires. From here, the company switched providers and chose Nextiva.

“For a company our size that doesn’t have an on-staff IT person, I really think Nextiva is just a terrific answer,” said Barineau. “I never expected a small company to be able to have some of the features we have now with Nextiva.”

An affordable platform that features voice, video and other channels (without the nightmare of multi-vendor integration) is ideal for a company that hopes to grow in the future. Cloud-based solutions offer unprecedented scalability, and a company that chooses a solution with ongoing, “hands-on” customer support will have a far easier time of making changes and scaling up (or down) as business needs require.

Since moving to Nextiva, Barineau reports that Blue Marble Media has been able to take advantage of advanced features that were once only available to large corporations help increase their teams’ productivity and efficiency; reliable phone service that allows them to communicate with clients all over the world, and the ability to easily add lines of service and features whenever they require. For companies whose business growth depends on reliable and flexible business communications, it can’t be about the features only…the service to back up the service is critical.