Switchvox Improves Communications for Busy Medical Center
The Customer
Cullman Primary Care consists of multiple, community-oriented patient care centers and doctors groups throughout Cullman, AL. The busy medical center has approximately 100 employees working at the hospital, while about 80 employees work at other locations.
Business Challenges
Cullman Primary Care recognized a need for a new phone system after their current setup began infringing on customer experience. The growing medical practice boasted 180 employees at various locations, and each office had a different phone system. Darrell Reaves, president of Integrated Communications Solutions (ICS), was brought in to address Cullman Primary Care’s confusing and dated solution. “They never knew who of their many phone vendors to call when they had a problem,” Reaves explains. “If someone called a doctor at one facility, and that doctor was located at another, it was difficult to transfer the call. They had to give the caller a different number to call, or transfer the call outside the system, overloading the facilities and causing constant customer complaints of not being able to get through. In the emergency field, that was a huge disadvantage.” When ICS first began helping the medical center, they knew it was only a matter of a few years before all of the phone systems would be obsolete and left with little to no support. “Having a single business system with the ability to connect all the facilities together, and only one service provider to call if they had a need for support, was very appealing to them.”
Solutions from Sangoma
ICS stepped in to show them how Switchvox was the perfect phone system for their needs. “Not only did it solve their disparate telephone system problem, but it turned out to be just the beginning of the advantages,” Reaves says. “It no doubt saved them a lot of money.” But due to the complicated nature of Cullman Primary Care’s network, ICS had to do a bit of clean up before they could install a Switchvox appliance. “Setting them up with Switchvox required pruning their current IP network because they were set up for IP using data, but not voice,” Reaves explains. “We were able to save them a lot of money by using their existing infrastructure, and simply installing POE switches.”
The Results
With Switchvox, Cullman Primary Care administrators are now able to enjoy the most basic features, like being able to pull up a screen and see who is calling, or blocking and rerouting calls. Another big improvement is the ability to forward calls from any of the multiple locations, as though they were all in one location without the caller knowing any differently. One particular benefit of Switchvox for administrators and staff is call reporting. This features allows them to monitor who is receiving the most calls, which helps them better manage operators. If the system is too weighted in one direction, they can reroute calls elsewhere. Reaves admits it is sometimes hard to get new customers to access all of the advanced features available from a Unified Communications solution like Switchvox; but, they try to make sure clients know what they are missing through training and advanced user cheat sheets. “So many companies nickel and dime their clients,” he says. “Then, when they get ready to expand, like Cullman Primary Care is about to do, the price starts rising. That isn’t the case with Switchvox. They continue to save while enjoying enhanced benefits with UC.”