The Customer
Community Housing Works (CHW) is a nonprofit organization specializing in real estate and lending, based in San Diego, California, that offers comprehensive programs helping more than 8,000 beneficiaries each year by providing opportunities to rent, buy, and achieve financial independence. CHW builds beautiful, safe, and green communities that working families can afford to rent in. Its services include financial counseling and leadership support, as well as academic support for young people.
Community Housing Works (CHW) is a nonprofit organization specializing in real estate and lending, based in San Diego, California, that offers comprehensive programs helping more than 8,000 beneficiaries each year by providing opportunities to rent, buy, and achieve financial independence. CHW builds beautiful, safe, and green communities that working families can afford to rent in. Its services include financial counseling and leadership support, as well as academic support for young people.
Business Challenges
When CHW decided to open a new facility, it became necessary to reassess the cost of its existing business telecommunications. It quickly became clear that it was time to part ways with the CallTower phone system and invest in a more reliable solution. The first problem was related to the company’s growth rate. CHW had added staff slowly but steadily over a 15-year period since the CallTower system was first implemented. “The previous IT director would simply call Utah whenever a new employee joined the team and say, ‘I need a new phone.’ No one recognized that the bill was gradually increasing every month,” explains Scott Granger, CHW’s IT director. Another problem Granger discovered was that as costs increased, service problems increased as well. The utility-style service offered no face-to-face interaction and very little remote technical support. “Superior customer service is a philosophy I have adhered to throughout my career, and I take pride in that. As a result, I have high service expectations of my suppliers, and we weren’t getting that from CallTower.”
With the organization rapidly moving toward enterprise requirements, a more robust solution was needed, so Granger began looking. “We also wanted our own phones and local support,” says Granger. “[Many options] had a ‘fit-it-and-forget-it’ attitude. They would come install it for us, then leave us to manage it with minimal support.” When Granger turned to the Switchvox unified communications system, he found the ideal solution at a price CHW could afford—thanks to a local company, SDTEK, which offered a fully managed solution. Switchvox was not entirely new to Granger, and he knew it had the capabilities and reliability needed, in addition to cost savings.
He first discovered Switchvox while working at SDTEK. The San Diego company specializes in communications. “I was certain that when we compared the systems based on cost, feature sets, and service from SDTEK, Switchvox would win, because I trusted [SDTEK] to meet my expectations for technical support,” explains Granger. “What I found was that with Switchvox, we could save $450,000 over 5 years.” That was substantial savings for any business, but especially for a nonprofit organization. Granger said he was immediately convinced.
Solutions From Sangoma
“We purchased the Switchvox system along with 115 new phones,” says Granger. “We also purchased an additional Switchvox device as a cold spare for on-site disaster recovery. The spare would allow us to get back online in 5 to 10 minutes if we faced a disaster that took the system out of service.” The comprehensive feature set offered by Switchvox was another selling point for CHW. “We really appreciate the chat integration,” says Granger. “The solution we had before was a desktop application that was supposed to integrate with Outlook, but it only worked halfway, so Switchvox’s UC features are a welcome addition. We also have voicemail-to-email integration. With the old system, we had usernames and passwords, which is quite common, but the Outlook configuration made it difficult to integrate with our infrastructure.” In addition, Switchvox’s user-friendly web interface gives users full control over their connection and call routing, so they can now forward their calls to a mobile phone.
“We purchased the Switchvox system along with 115 new phones,” says Granger. “We also purchased an additional Switchvox device as a cold spare for on-site disaster recovery. The spare would allow us to get back online in 5 to 10 minutes if we faced a disaster that took the system out of service.” The comprehensive feature set offered by Switchvox was another selling point for CHW. “We really appreciate the chat integration,” says Granger. “The solution we had before was a desktop application that was supposed to integrate with Outlook, but it only worked halfway, so Switchvox’s UC features are a welcome addition. We also have voicemail-to-email integration. With the old system, we had usernames and passwords, which is quite common, but the Outlook configuration made it difficult to integrate with our infrastructure.” In addition, Switchvox’s user-friendly web interface gives users full control over their connection and call routing, so they can now forward their calls to a mobile phone.
The Results
For employees, the intuitive and easy-to-use design made the transition to Switchvox almost effortless. It required little training to get staff up to speed on how to record their greetings and manage their phones. SDTEK was able to provide the training required. “They were concerned about how accustomed we were to the old system and did not want the learning curve to be too long. The new system had to be functional and easy to use — and Switchvox is exactly that.” The days of relying on costly remote support to manage routine functions are over.
For employees, the intuitive and easy-to-use design made the transition to Switchvox almost effortless. It required little training to get staff up to speed on how to record their greetings and manage their phones. SDTEK was able to provide the training required. “They were concerned about how accustomed we were to the old system and did not want the learning curve to be too long. The new system had to be functional and easy to use — and Switchvox is exactly that.” The days of relying on costly remote support to manage routine functions are over.
If CHW needs to add a new employee or move an employee from one office to another, this can be handled internally or by calling SDTEK for local support. Another major advantage of Switchvox concerns the IVR trees maintained by CHW. There are about 90 IVR trees, two of which are bilingual. The auto attendant can now direct calls to the information system or ring a line directly. “Switchvox has been a huge success, not only in terms of cost savings and ROI,” adds Granger, “but also in terms of features and ease of use.”