The Customer
Summit County Public Health (SCPH) is a community health organization with two locations in Akron and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. SCPH provides environmental and community health education programs, clinical and medical counseling services, as well as direct and coordinated school health services to more than half a million residents of Summit County, Ohio.
Summit County Public Health (SCPH) is a community health organization with two locations in Akron and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. SCPH provides environmental and community health education programs, clinical and medical counseling services, as well as direct and coordinated school health services to more than half a million residents of Summit County, Ohio.
Business Challenges
After consolidating with the Akron City Health Department and the Barberton City Health Services Division, SCPH’s employee count more than doubled to nearly 300, while its four locations quickly grew to eleven facilities. According to Cory Kendrick, SCPH’s IT and telecommunications manager, each of the three individual entities operated its own legacy phone system. SCPH’s end-of-life Nortel system was largely inadequate for its internal needs, while Akron and Barberton both ran analog PBXs. “Not only were internal communications awkward and inefficient, but communicating effectively among multiple administrative facilities, satellite offices, and clinics across the county was becoming difficult,” Kendrick explains. Managing a larger workforce and more facilities, while keeping pace with the organization’s evolving services and programs, meant the IT department was under increasing pressure to find a solution. “Even if the consolidation had not happened, we already knew we had a problem with the phone system,” Kendrick admits. “When the consolidation happened, it brought the phone system problems to the forefront.” Kendrick knew exactly where to go to develop a plan. When he worked for a small county agency a few years ago, Kendrick had worked with Tim May, sales director at N2Net in Cleveland, to install a Switchvox solution.
This experience showed Kendrick that Switchvox could increase productivity and profitability at an attractive price by using Voice over IP (VoIP) technology. Without a fixed budget, setting the price of a new phone solution presented challenges. “One of the reasons the telecom project had been postponed before was the preliminary quotes from various vendors for nearly 300,000 $,” explains Kendrick. “After a meeting to determine the agency’s specific requirements, N2Net recommended Switchvox for its functionality, an alternative offering a significantly lower upfront cost, with the potential for recurring savings.”
The health board supported the decision to proceed with the Switchvox alternative. The entire Switchvox solution would cost about 30 % of the cost of other systems, including installation and configuration at all eleven sites. If the scale of the savings seemed too good to be true, it became even better when Kendrick also showed the health department an estimate of an additional 5 % in savings resulting from eliminating recurring costs and service contracts.
Sangoma Solutions
May and her N2Net team generally install the Switchvox devices they sell, but Kendrick and his network support specialist, Eddie Mink, were confident they could do the work themselves. “We purchased two Switchvox devices. We placed one at the Graham Road location in Stow, and the other at Morley Health Center in Akron. All the various programs and their sites were integrated into the implementation of the new system.” One of the many advantages of Switchvox is that it requires very little, if any, advanced training.
May and her N2Net team generally install the Switchvox devices they sell, but Kendrick and his network support specialist, Eddie Mink, were confident they could do the work themselves. “We purchased two Switchvox devices. We placed one at the Graham Road location in Stow, and the other at Morley Health Center in Akron. All the various programs and their sites were integrated into the implementation of the new system.” One of the many advantages of Switchvox is that it requires very little, if any, advanced training.
“The Switchvox system is so user-friendly that I was able to customize an environment very similar to our old system so that if a user automatically dialed ‘nine’ to get an outside line (out of habit), the call would still go through instead of getting a busy tone or having to hang up and try again,” explains Kendrick. “It was a much more user-friendly way to break old habits and help employees quickly learn the advanced features of the Switchvox phone system.”
The Results
The benefits of the new phone system became clear when SCPH began integrating Switchvox into its operations. “You know, the system is so easy to install and configure; everything went smoothly. We deployed Switchvox in the two main offices in a month, and all the phones were moved to the main office in a few weeks,” explains Kendrick. Kendrick also reports positive feedback from staff. In keeping with SCPH’s commitment to having a live person answer every call, the receptionist is delighted with how the auto attendant routes incoming calls into call groups and queues assigned to certain departments. She no longer needs to memorize a long list of extensions. Other team members also appreciate the mobility the system offers.
“There are so many things you can do with Switchvox and the mobile UC platform that it is somewhat overwhelming. The IT department and I are experimenting with the functionality. Some are using the Switchvox app for iPhone to get voicemail and emails on their smartphone. A few of us are experimenting with tablets,” explains Kendrick. Kendrick sums up all the new benefits when he explains, “Customer service has greatly improved, and we have a much higher caller connection rate than before. We can run reports that help us with quality control, identify problems, and show us areas for improvement based on call behavior. Before, we had no way of knowing when calls were dropped, how many times someone called, or how long they remained on hold. We can track all of that now, thanks to Switchvox.”