Discount Plumbing

Discount Plumbing, a plumbing, heating and air conditioning service and repair company in central California, was frustrated with their existing phone system. The aging phone system made internal communications cumbersome and it was not equipped to effectively manage communications and service calls with the company’s technicians in the field. The company partnered with authorized Panasonic reseller Advent Technologies and worked with a team of highly trained telephony experts to evaluate a new business communications platform that would provide more advanced features to improve overall communications and enhance call productivity for the growing business.

Discount Plumbing needed a communications system that could be installed easily and eliminate time-consuming pen and paper processes without disrupting the business. They also wanted to ensure it was possible to set-up remote management capabilities so the team could manage call volumes and easily transfer requests to technicians day or night no matter where a technician might be located. A major pain point of the old system was the fact that only one phone worked with caller ID making it difficult to screen out non-customer related calls. These issues played a major role in the company needing to upgrade to a new business communications solution in order to improve daily processes not only for employees and field technicians, but for customers as well.

The installation was extremely smooth and Discount Plumbing had all its telephone numbers connected through a single unified system. The complete KX-NS700 and KX-NT556 phone solution, specifically designed for small-to-medium-sized business, has now been in use for over a year. Discount Plumbing was thrilled they could consolidate all their needs into a single, more cost-effective IP-based system instead of having to rely on multiple vendors for their business communications needs. Employees appreciate the advanced call-routing and remote management capabilities because it has given them a sense of freedom and security knowing if they are traveling or working in the field, they can respond quickly to all service inquiries. Once the system installation was complete, Discount Plumbing was particularly happy with the night mode feature, which allows any member of the team to ‘roll the phones’ from any location instead of requiring someone to physically be at the office. With the old system, if someone forgot to turn on call forwarding before they left the office it required an inconvenient trip back to the office at night or on weekends. Other key features the company finds particularly helpful are easy to read backlit displays, call parking and voicemail to email functions that ensure they can quickly identify which calls and messages are the highest priority.

Since the deployment, the staff at Discount Plumbing has eliminated many manual processes and can manage incoming calls and quickly transfer calls to the appropriate technicians in the field. In addition, the system’s recording feature has been extremely useful to improve customer service and best practices training and to identify areas for improvement. It is also helpful to have a recording of all interactions for potential misunderstandings around job estimates or customer service issues. Additionally, having the option to wait or leave a message for a technician to call back has proven effective for the overall team. "Compared to the old system, we’re missing a lot less calls and that has been great for the business," said Kyle Weinheimer, owner of Discount Plumbing.

Discount Plumbing has also enjoyed a much more flexible and intuitive system and a cheaper phone bill since upgrading to the KX-NS700 solution. "For growing businesses like ours that are still trying to manage with outdated technology, it would be a mistake not to consider upgrading because we’ve had such a positive experience," Kyle said. "It’s not just about the return on investment and lower phone bills which are great, but there are a lot of intangible benefits such as better efficiency and it’s just a more professional system overall. I wish I would have done it sooner."