Straight Talk with Carollo Engineers

Inflow Communications Review

Inflow Performance Review Series – A detailed performance review from the source – our customers!

At Inflow, we’re always trying to set the bar higher for ourselves. We’ve developed a periodic questionnaire to review with our clients – to ensure that we are going above and beyond for our customers. We already have our live and unfiltered customer happiness metrics on our website, but why not share these more in-depth performance reviews of what it’s like to work with Inflow? This series will give you exactly that – find out what it’s like to work with us, straight from the horse’s mouth. 

Carollo Engineers is an environmental engineering firm that specializes in the planning, design, and construction management of water and wastewater facilities. We spoke with the recently, to talk about how their transition and upgrade process went, and to try and get some insight into where Inflow stands in the PBX industry today.

Below you’ll find our recent Q&A with Carollo Engineers

1. What were the major reasons you were looking for a new company to support your ShoreTel system? 

We were with a different vendor and I enjoyed working with the technicians of our previous vendor they were pretty good but calling into queue there were basically only three or four techs. And if they were busy, I had to leave a voice message. What I like about Inflow is that I call your tech line and I get a tech. I seldom have to wait – I always get somebody. So that is outstanding that I can call in and know that I’m going to be able to work on a problem right then and there. If I come to a dead end where I can’t solve an issue or I got a quick question, I know I can call your tech line, get an answer, and go on to my next problem. That’s what I love about Inflow.

Also with our previous vendor, I felt like I was kind of ignored by the account manager. He was hard to get a hold of, when I tried to call his cell phone, it went to a voicemail, I was never even sure if I got his voicemail. So it was very frustrating and trying to schedule other people our previous vendor to talk about, for example, the ShoreTel Upgrade, was very, very frustrating. I would always send in a request to my account manager and then I had to wait weeks for him to gather the troops and get the right people to be on the call.

2. How did you learn about Inflow Communications? 

I somehow got on Inflow’s email list and was invited to training courses. I took one or two of them, and that’s how I went forward and saw what you guys had to offer.

3. What were the main reasons you decided to move your support relationship to Inflow? 

Our maintenance contract was up and unfortunately, my account manager (with our previous vendor) forgot to notify us, and blamed somebody else, and gave us a week to renew the maintenance. When the contract came due with our previous vendor,  I basically said I’m going to see if there’s something better out there, and that’s when I reached out to Inflow.

4. Since moving your ShoreTel support to Inflow, what major fixes or enhancements have they helped you make? 

You guys helped us upgrade the system last December. Brad Monroe went onsite and we really loved Brad, he is an excellent engineer. He flew out onsite and gave everybody a warm, fuzzy feeling, including my manager, about the ShoreTel Upgrade. I had kept reaching out to my account manager at our previous vendor about the upgrade and I was just spinning my wheels. So once we moved over to Inflow, we made it clear that we really wanted to get the upgrade.

We are now able to go to 480G phones and we’re starting to purchase some I believe when we get warm and fuzzy from Josh or Inflow, about Connect, I’m sure management will want to move forward with the Connect upgrade. 

Brad went above and beyond the call of duty. He provided us with some network charts – he went and looked at our network so that we could be prepared as to what the speed was when we pushed that upgrade out. We had some good data from Brad, so I felt really comfortable with Brad steering that ship.

After it was all said and done, we really had no issue with any of our users. We didn’t have any complaints. Basically, it made ShoreTel look good, it made IT look good and it was pretty invisible to the users. 

And, Brad studied our system. Brad can see our network and make recommendations, suggestions, and pull out the problem areas much better than I ever could. I think when Brad works with a customer, you really feel like he’s a consultant – you really feel like he’s part of your team.

I feel like your technicians take ownership of it (issues) and don’t try to close a ticket or try to say “hey, it’s your network.” They don’t come to me and say “go check your network,” – if they are suspicious of a network, I know that I can ask them to get on a call with my networking people.

5. How has working with Inflow helped you gain knowledge? Have any fixes, and/or enhancements improved your business? 

I know that if I got a problem with a user, I can get it fixed and resolved. As a business impact, my users don’t have to accept a problem as “I don’t know what the problem is.” And I know that I can go to Inflow and get an answer for my user and I don’t have to go back to my user and say “nobody knows how to fix it,” or “it’s a bug, we’ll have to wait till we upgrade,” or something like that. I can actually go back to my users and say “this is why it’s doing it this way,”  so I feel like I’m getting the people I support better answers to their questions, better answers to their problems and getting them resolved.

I love working with each and every one of the Inflow techs – don’t ever let them go to another job!

 

6. Now that you’ve been with Inflow for a while, are there any negative Inflow attributes that stand out? 

I really haven’t had any disappointments calling into tech support; Josh has never let me down. I’ve had a really good experience with Inflow. We have a lot of office adds, a lot of office moves, and I can reach out and request a technician even if they have to fly in from another state.      

 

7. How does Inflow compare to your other technology vendors? 

In the past working with other PBX vendors, I would say Inflow is head and shoulders above anybody else I’ve worked with. I worked with another ShoreTel vendor in Boulder, Colorado and I loved their team but they just didn’t have the number of technicians that you have. They were stuck on fires all the time so if I didn’t have a fire, I had to wait for them. Even though they were good technicians, they were always working on fires because they didn’t have the headcount that you guys have. And that’s one of the things I really like about Inflow is that, you’re not afraid to have the number of technicians it takes to answer the calls and fix the problems.

Your team is communicating with one another to resolve anybody’s problem. I don’t feel like the person who answered my phone call can’t escalate my problem until he’s spent 15 minutes on it and some companies require that. And your team is constantly in communication with one another so I feel like I don’t just have one person working on my problem.

If you’re looking for some accurate, user reviews of what it’s like working with Inflow, then keep up with our series as we talk with more clients in the coming blog posts.