Speakeasy Keeps Small Business Customers Happy

By: Greg Galitzine

Speakeasy (News - Alert) Business VoIP is popular with small businesses because it cuts costs and delivers competitive advantages that are for the most part unavailable with traditional phone systems. Advanced features give small businesses a productivity boosting toolset for maximizing business continuity.

Newport Communications

According to Chris Odor, Information Technology Manager at Newport Communications, “Speakeasy Business VoIP is a much more robust and effective system than a traditional PBX (News - Alert) phone system. You get a lot more scalability and a lot more flexibility.”

Newport Communications Group operates a multimedia network for trucking and its allied industries. In addition to two magazines — Heavy Duty Trucking and RoadStar — Newport offers full market research capabilities and targeted advertising via the Internet, sales literature distribution, truckers’ radio and on-site media. The company employs fifty professionals — 15 in Irvine, five in Chicago, five in Northern California, and the rest in home offices across the country.

It’s the solution’s ability to accommodate such a far-flung workforce that really appeals to Odor.

“It allows us to tie all our sales offices, editors, and other employees into one system. We save on long distance and have the appearance of one unified company, even though we’re spread out.”

With Speakeasy’s Auto Attendant, Newport was able to eliminate the need for a receptionist. With the Find Me/Follow Me feature, employees on the road never miss important calls. Remote employees are tied in via Speakeasy TeleWorker service. All of these services are hosted under Speakeasy’s private nationwide network.

Employees all over the country are united by one phone system, enabling no-cost extension dialing and effortless call transfers. Upfront costs were less than 15 percent of what Newport would have paid with a traditional phone system. Newport enjoys cost control and single-bill efficiency — rather than reimbursing employees for disparate home office services.

Matchstic

Speakeasy is also known for offering a level of customer support above and beyond what the typical consumer ISP or local phone company is known for. In fact Speakeasy has been receiving high marks for customer support for more than a decade.

Dustin Britt, Operations Manager for Atlanta, GA-based Matchstic says, “Phone service is often seen as a commodity, and we do get great features at a great price from Speakeasy. But we also get a very unique level of customer service. My Dedicated Business Account Manager is always responsive and proactive. When I need something done, he makes it quick and painless, so I can get back to work.”

Matchstic is a branding and design house whose six-person team serves a wide range of clients from Grammy-winning musicians to corporate America. When Matchstic moved to a new office space in 2006, they decided to combine their voice and broadband services with a VoIP solution, and selected Speakeasy.

With such a small number of employees serving a diverse and growing client base, Matchstic is a great example of a company that absolutely needs to get the most from each employee by maximizing productivity.

Speakeasy’s simplified phone system management via an intuitive Web-based control panel makes access to the solution’s feature set much easier for Matchstic employees. Speakeasy service provides a plethora of features, including basic phone functions like caller ID, call forwarding, call hold, call transfer, call waiting, 3-way calling, redial, do not disturb, speed dial, and hook flash.

The service also offers innovative features such as:

• Find Me/Follow Me, which allows users to define call treatments – how incoming calls are routed or forwarded for individuals or groups of inbound callers – ensuring that important calls are not missed.
• Remote Office, which enables users to make and receive calls from any phone as if they were in the office, regardless of their actual location.
• Voicemail as Email, which allows users to receive their voicemail as an attached .wav file in their e-mail inbox.
• A VoIP Communications Toolbar, which is a plug-in designed to allow users to access their Business VoIP features directly from Outlook or Internet Explorer. The toolbar can be used to access virtually all of the Business VoIP features, including placing and accepting telephone calls, transferring calls, changing telephone settings, and 3-way conferencing.

Speakeasy continually tries to stay ahead of the competition by being as flexible as possible for their customers. As this article was headed for print, Speakeasy announced a new broadband policy. In essence, the company agreed to allow customers to choose their broadband provider with any of Speakeasy’s voice services. (Speakeasy had historically required customers to use Speakeasy broadband service for quality reasons.)

This new broadband service offering was created to give small businesses more flexibility to fit their specific needs.

Announcing the new strategy, Speakeasy president and CEO Bruce Chatterley said, “Most of our competitors are anchored to a rigid model of requiring customers to use their voice services with their broadband or they don’t offer broadband at all. We are one of the only telecommunications companies in the United States to offer both options to our customers.” IT

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