Graybar Electric Company, Inc.  

Why Qwest?

" Our decision to select Qwest as our networking provider was driven by the fact that we were very impressed with their customer service capabilities.
Obviously, we didn't have a chance to experience those ahead of time, but talking to reference customers, talking to their service people, looking at the methodologies that they use for supporting their customers, we felt very comfortable that we were gonna be upgrading the level of support that we were going to receive from Qwest.

Secondly, technology was an important driver for us.

We looked at the Qwest networks; we looked at their IP-based infrastructure for the MPLS; we were very impressed. We felt that they were ahead of their competitors at that stage of the game. We also felt that their networks were superior, the technology of their networks was superior, and we were very comfortable with the strategy they had moving forward with their designs and their plans in the future for their networks.

Third was their flexibility, and when I talk about flexibility, I'm thinking especially about things like provisioning. Our previous experiences with trying to provision new lines, new service, new facilities. It was torture--literally--to try and get those things done; very, very difficult. Qwest presented to us a flexibility in that regard to work with Graybar to try to meet our timelines, to meet our time requirements, and so we were very impressed with that.

I'd say the fourth thing, and perhaps it could be the overall factor, would be that we felt with Qwest that our overall total cost of ownership would be significantly lower. And again, for a company like Graybar, trying to drive costs out of the business is extremely important to us. "

Customer service

" Our experience with Qwest's customer service, I would say has more than exceeded our expectations.

As I've mentioned before, that was certainly an important criteria for us in our selection of a service provider and we haven't been disappointed with the service that Qwest has delivered to us.

Our account team does an excellent job in terms of not only coordinating any activities that are going on, but meeting with us on a regular basis--I think we meet on a weekly or a bi-weekly basis; meeting with our support teams, identifying areas of opportunity, identifying areas where we may have issues and working on those issues. So they've done a tremendous job in terms of supporting us on an ongoing basis.

The support services that we've received have been outstanding. Anytime that we've had issues where there's been repair issues, they've responded immediately to address those issues.

I would say that the billing is tremendous. It's accurate--that sounds silly to say, but anyone who's had experience in the communications area with billing knows that that's not always the case, and in the few instances where we have had billing issues, those have been corrected before the next billing cycle, so the response has been very rapid.

And perhaps the biggest selling point on the quality that we receive from Qwest, the customer service that we receive from Qwest, has to do with their willingness to take ownership for problems.

Our previous service provider, I felt like we always had the burden of proof on us to prove that the problem was theirs. That's never been the case with Qwest. There's a level of trust between Qwest and Graybar; a level of trust in terms of the troubleshooting procedures and methodology that we use, and so when we come to them with an issue they immediately take ownership and you're not spending time spinning your wheels trying to prove who's at fault or whose problem is it or who needs to work on it; they've been willing to take the ownership and the problem gets resolved that much faster. "

Why Qwest

"We've projected over the first three years of our contract we will reduce our expenses by 24 percent while doubling our bandwidth for the Internet, for the MPLS head-end circuits, and reducing costs. That's tremendous for us.

The other area that we've seen some real benefit is that, that backbone pipe--the dual Ethernet circuits running between St. Louis and Kansas City. We've increased that capacity by six times and yet we reduced the expense of that backbone by five percent over what we were previously paying for that. So that's tremendous for us.

For the individual branches, we have--82 percent of our branches are covered by the high-speed MPLS circuits. We've increased their bandwidth by 35 percent and yet we were able to reduce their expenses, and so that was a tremendous benefit.

We had a disaster recovery circuit running from one of our St. Louis facilities into Kansas City; because of the performance of our backbone now, we were able to disconnect that circuit and eliminate the cost of that on a monthly basis.

We also--because we were running Ethernet-based circuits, we were able to retire five ATM switches that were end of life that we were going to have to replace or purchase new cards for, and so we've avoided the cost and expense of having to do that as well as eliminated the ongoing maintenance expense of that hardware. "

*These results are unique to this entity and should not be considered an indication of the amount of savings or improvements, if any, that my be realized by any other entity subscribing to comparable services.