Top Choice for Small Business and Professionals

“BT RingCentral has the features I need. Now my business number reaches me wherever I am. The service helps me look much more professional."
  - Ellis Eastham, owner of Eastham Electrical Services
  read the case study

“As a small business owner, I need more than just a phone number. With multiple extensions, call forwarding and Fax, BT RingCentral combines all the features I need to manage my business communications."
  - Adam Boulton, owner of The Ideal Warehouse

“Before BT RingCentral, my mobile number was my only communication line with my customers. Now, with a toll-free number and call forwarding service, my customers can easily reach me through a more professional line of communication."
  - Ionut Copacel, owner of J&D Interiors

“BT RingCentral helps us look like a big company, even though we are four people working from different locations. My customers can now reach me when I am traveling as easily as when I am in the office."
  - Simon Williams, owner of Simon Williams and Associates

Case Study #1: Eastham Electrical Services. Sparking new business with BT RingCentral. Download PDF

Catching calls
The most important thing for any business is custom but for small, highly mobile companies making sure they receive customers’ calls can be difficult.

Although Ellis Eastham has a home office, he is rarely there. Ellis and his two employees spend most of their time installing and servicing customers’ electrical fittings. This used to mean he would miss calls and lose business when his home number went unanswered or was picked up by one of his young children.

“Basically anyone who was in the house would answer the phone, and it didn’t sound very professional,” Ellis explains. “I wanted calls to reach me wherever I might be, so that I wouldn’t miss any customers.”

He needed a more business-like image and a service to match, and conducted a search on the internet for 0800 services. “BT RingCentral was the offer that appealed to me most,” continues Ellis. Furthermore, it was able to provide him with the services he wanted without changing his telephone provider.

Freedom from hassle
Ellis quickly set up BT RingCentral online. There was no hardware to buy, no installation costs, no engineers to co-ordinate, and no long-term contracts. “The whole process has been smooth and straightforward,” he remarks.

BT RingCentral also has functions that Ellis is not yet using. These include things like phone extensions, advanced answering rules, music and messaging on hold, and internet fax. “These features that may become useful later on as the company grows,” he observes.

Concentrating on customers
Business is building with BT RingCentral. Eastham Electrical Services now has an 0800 number, which encourages more calls. Ellis notes: “The 0800 number appeals to customers because it’s free for them to get in contact with me. Plus it gives the company a better image.” Other BT RingCentral features allow Ellis to capitalise on this increased traffic. For example, when he’s out the business number is forwarded to his mobile phone so he is always available regardless of his location.

Ellis also plans to set up BT RingCentral extensions for his employees so that everyone can be reached via the same number. This will allow him to pass calls to colleagues when he’s busy, rather than asking customers to redial individual numbers, making Eastham Electrical Services look like a large company.

BT RingCentral allows Ellis to concentrate on his first priority: his customers. “BT RingCentral has the features I need. Now my business number reaches me wherever I am. The service helps me look much more professional,” he concludes.

Case Study #2: Platinum Express Limousines runs its business with RingCentral Online and DigitalLine.

Platinum Express Limousines, a full service limousine company in Orange, California, operates seven vehicles from two passenger executive cars to luxury SUVs. Owner Octavio Carillo immediately saw the need for an 800 number.

He had started with his personal cell phone number on the company’s Web site. “I realized that the cell phone wouldn’t cut it,” Octavio says, “Getting an 800 number was common sense. You get 33% more calls because you have an 800 number. It’s a free call and it makes you look bigger. Most big companies have 800 numbers so having one makes you seem as big and does make you more credible.”

“I did some research for 800 numbers and found RingCentral. I reviewed the product and it seemed to be the best compared to the others. You get the toll free number, free fax, minutes and a complete phone system.”

RingCentral’s 800 number has helped the business grow. “I’ve gotten a lot of business just because of the 800 number and the Web site,” he says. “I am nationwide, now, and I’ve even gotten calls from out of the country.”

When the call comes in, Octavio monitors and answers the calls on his Call Controller SoftPhone or lets the calls go to the four phones in the office. “It’s a fool proof system,” he says. If no one in the office answers it, it then routes to two cell phones. If no one answers at any of the phones, the call goes to voicemail. So they never miss a call.

Like most RingCentral customers, Octavio is exploring other features that came with his 800 number. “I use the call logs to check statistics, how many calls came in, who called, or to see if we missed a call.” And as for RingCentral’s online tools, Octavio says, “Anybody could set up this phone system. It’s self explanatory, it’s not rocket science.” Internet fax is an unexpected bonus. “If you’re working on a document, you can automatically fax it out,” he says. “Instead of printing faxes, I just store them where they need go instead of wasting paper and trees.”

Octavio added DigitalLine, RingCentral’s new VoIP outbound dialing option, and loves it. “I make and answer calls right on my PC with DigitalLine,” he says. “I’m wireless, too, through a router in the office. And the quality is great!”

He feels that using DigitalLine with RingCentral gives you everything you need for a small business. “Literally, you can run your business from your DigitalLine; you could be at the beach,” he says. “It’s got everything built in to it: you can send faxes, you can receive faxes, your voice messaging system is on there, you can listen to them, play them, send them somewhere, delete them.”

“Businesses need to have RingCentral,” Octavio concludes. “I can’t live without. It’s the best thing I ran into since I started the business.”

Case Study #3: Ed Brill got the phone system he needed and found it delivered more than he expected.

ITS Magellan Services provides reservation and sales services to over 700 independent hotels in about 30 countries. It has five employees in the USA, one in Italy and three in South America.

They receive calls from hotels with software questions or consumers about booking questions. “We needed a way to separate the calls and get it to the right person,” says Ed Brill, ITS Magellan’s president. “Our phone line provider could not give us the services that we wanted—caller attendant, voicemail, email to fax and fax to email—without buying an enormously expensive phone system for twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars and we just didn’t want to do that. So I did some research, found RingCentral and we tried it.”

Ed set up separate extensions for each function: 1 for new reservations, 2 for hotel support, 3 for sales and so on. The calls go to whoever handles those tasks. New reservations go to Ft. Lauderdale; accounting, sales and business development go to New York. Ed found the set up and ongoing management of the system to be extremely easy. “For example,” Ed says, “if one of the staff in Florida is ill, on vacation or on a business trip, we can quickly direct all his calls and all his work over to somebody else during that time period.”

RingCentral’s internet faxing proved immediately helpful in addressing their high volume of faxes. “Before, we had paper city,” he says. “You hoped nobody would light a cigarette for fear of fire, but the faxes now come as emails. We can receive faxes and forward them immediately to the local office that is responsible for that function. It has dramatically decreased the need to print everything and it has easily kept up with all the correspondence in a timely way and it’s done it in a way that’s easy to manage.”

RingCentral also proved to be a management tool. “RingCentral has given me management information that I never had before,” he says. “Being in New York with the operations center in Ft. Lauderdale, RingCentral helps me monitor the voicemails and faxes and communication that goes to a particular department and whether the messages are being handled. And it’s given me information so I don’t have to constantly request copies of something from our operations center.”

“RingCentral is really a good solution for us because it gave us all the services, all the bells and whistles you would get from a big phone company and a big phone system but without the investment,” Ed says. “It’s working beautifully and we keep adding more services on every month. We’re not the largest account with RingCentral, but we are probably one of the most satisfied.”

“Overall,” he concludes, “RingCentral works exactly as it’s described. It has never failed. We are not using everything that’s there but what we are using is working really, really well.”