Vocalocity Voice Over IP Service Provider Atlanta Internet

I just recently began service with Vocalocity as we are an internet based company and have several internal CRM programs that interface with VOIP based services easily. They do not mind you interfere with VOIP services; they simply look at the incoming port for the VOIP services and let the CSR agent know there is an incoming call. This is to reduce the need for loud rings in the office thus reducing noise traffic in a programmer centric environment.

over all, I like the interface Vocalocity uses for their customers, though it does take a few seconds longer to log in than most Customer Relations Management systems I encounter; but that is a minor problem I have with their service.

I am a senior partner, operational manger, and IT Officer for a new program development start-up in the San Diego marketplace. Primarily an internet based business, but we do provide 24 hour technical support and conduct, vendor, financial, investor, and sales operations via the phone. Some phone calls can equate to a $100 thousand dollars in cash flow and are often based on impulse decisions and the heat of the moment. A missed call can be costly t say the least.

I signed up with Vocalocity a couple months back to support our start up operations and a remote sales team we are building. I only last week began using the system at the beginning of March. Since then I have come to find the service adequate at best and extremely problematic or non operational at the highest peak times or Vocalocity's peak server loads. I am a 15 year IT and IT Communications veteran and I understand the issues that come into play in user provisioning. I intimately familiar with and understand the draw backs and difficulties in deploying and managing functional VOIP-based PBX systems. Inherent technical issues I can overlook with ease; when given the chance to talk with knowledgeable and available customer service and technical support to resolve the issue. It is when I don't have that opportunity through no lack of trying that I become less than patient, and to date in a week of trying I have not once been able to get a hold of a Technical Support representaive even once.

In this case I am having several issues with a phone which is supported by Vocalocity and a phone which was in fact programmed directly by Vocalocity before shipping it to me. The phone works fine on other systems of identical design. It is just the service is disconnecting is the middle of calls and sometimes simply just resetting. I found several issues with my router and firewall configuration that needed to be addressed such as port ident and forwarding issues, so I took care of that myself and resolved most if this issues. But the fact is that I had to do that on my own because I had no luck getting a hold of their technical support crew for well over a week. This is where the problem starts.

I am not going to call Vocalocity a "Rip-Off" as I do not think they are necessarily that. What I am seeing is a company with a decent product and baseline system to deploy that product to the public. What I also see is a lack of technically knowledgeable customer support personnel, a small sales force and a dramatically understaffed technical support crew. This is inefficient at best and definitely a precursor to their business floundering and eventually closing the doors. At the most basic level, their business model looks to support a buyout out by a competitor, and I imagine that is by design as one of their exit strategies.

I would definitely suggest that if they are serious at all about continuing business, they should make an immediate redistribution of priorities and put greater emphasis on their technical staffing requirements. It is their weakest link. Their CS staff is a mix of rude and with little knowledge IT based products, which is actually a just frustration on their part; for this I actually feel for them, I really do. In an IT company a technical support staff is really Customer Service and Customer Service as we typically know it, is Billing and Administration or something by any other name than Customer Service. So they need to at least redirect customers to Technical Support directly. To do that they need more tech savvy staff.

To accomodate this need, they might consider replacing some of their customer service staff for tier 1 technical support staff or training the CSRs hey have now as Tier 1 personnel and using the technical support staff they currently have on staff as Tier II and III managers and support personnel. This wouldnt take much of an effort and a small SBA injection would provide the funding they need to do that. Secondly they might consider adding a CRM chat system to allow for real time IM based support options. These can be quickly replied to and allow a half way decent multi-tasker to answer several incoming questions pretty much simultaneously.

I know I am long winded in this post. But what I am getting at sort of requires it to remain balanced and objective as I can be. Simply put; if they cannot at least take the measures I have just suggested, they will fail and any customers they have will be in a heap of issues trying to get a phone system up and running before it is too late. I would definitely hold off buying services from this company for a little while. I think they have great potential, but until they take steps to resolve the issues in their technical support staffing, they cannot take care of their customer-base effectively; at least as it stands now. VOIP is a hard-manage at best. It rarely runs as expected by those employing its technology and definitely not when being sold to the public. I have witnessed a Veteran CCIE (Cisco Certified Intranetworking Engineer) pull her hair out over this.

I have managed a Cisco Based VOIP solution for the United States Army National Guard with over 1200 users statewide, and that was a nightmare in and of itself. It is a full time staff of 12 just to manage that small of a network, and a full time CCIE just to support the routing, user provisioning, and load balancing, with one staff member devoted to POE (Point of Entry)service providers and other related issues. I cant imagine trying to do it for a broad nationwide client-base. If they need some reliable intel on some third party support firms that are very savvy in this field I have some suggestions.

Until then I am sorta stuck with them and giving them a chance to take corrective action to mine and my stakeholders' benefit. But I am not waiting that long as I am being pressured to move on to someone else.

Patrick
San Diego, California
U.S.A.