Ready Care Industries  

Why CenturyLink?

"The reasons we went with Qwest was for the reliability, A number one; being able to get ahold of somebody who could help me. My rep did a great job at following our structure that we wanted to set up. We had not had at Ready Care Industries what I would call the disaster lines, meaning that if my T1 were to go down, which brings in all my phone lines, I basically am out of business in terms of incoming phone calls. If the T1 happened to go down on the Internet, I'm down on that. Qwest was fantastic at helping me set up what I call the 'Disaster Scenario' where I can have four lines that come in that are routed somehow different--I don't understand all the technology, but they're routed differently. As long as there's not a major problem region-wide, I can at least get my phone calls.
In the past when I had tried to take care of that with my old provider, it was cost prohibitive, equipment prohibitive; they couldn't do it. I never knew what the real, real story was. It was very aggravating. And when we sat down to talk about signing a contract, that was one of my key points that I wanted to have included for the future, and it was very simple, at least from my rep's standpoint, that we were able to do it. And the cost was--it was very cost effective for the company."

Customer service

"My experience with Qwest's customer service since our changeover has been exceptional--and I don't say that lightly. I can give you two different examples: One right after our changeover; there still were a couple of loose ends to tie up, and at that point I was unaware that my Qwest rep could take care of that--I called the customer service area. The customer service area was very clear in telling me that they could not take care of that, my Qwest rep had to take care of that--which means the customer gets to be a little frustrated and aggravated, being stuck in the middle, especially since really my employees don't care, they just want the phones to work. The nice part in this example is that customer service rep, on their own after we hung up, realized the frustration that I was having and contacted my rep on their own and the Qwest rep called me immediately saying 'Please, I want to offer, until the transition period is completely done, to contact me directly and I will take care of that for you directly.' The nice part is we've been doing--since that point in time, we've actually bought a couple more phone lines outside of the state of Colorado and he has followed through on all of that at this point in time--which I did not expect that to happen. I figured I'd be handed off to another rep, not knowing Qwest's policy and procedures--and that has not happened, and it's been six months now. And I'm not trying to set Qwest up to keep one rep for me for the lifetime of my contract, but it's been very nice that I've been able to contact the same person over and over.
My other Qwest customer service was also prior to knowing this, I called on my own for a very, very small, minor billing problem and that was taken care of immediately. It was very small; I just happened to catch it, being an accountant--caught a small billing problem. They credited that immediately and also e-mailed my rep on that, who asked me again 'Please, if you have this problem, at least at this point, bring it back to me and I will correct it again if it were to happen.' And I'm gonna sound really, really picky here--it was only 5 bucks, but I happened to catch it. It just stuck out rather glaring, and it was nice to know that 5 bucks I didn't have to spend hours on."

Non-Financial Benefits

"Some of the--what I would call the 'hidden benefits', the non-financial benefits--the DID numbers. I did not know how useful that would be for my salespeople. It really helps them identify before they pick up that phone who they're talking to. It seems so simple; overlooked it in the past. We never had it, so didn't know what we were missing until we had it.
Faster Internet--that definitely helps. Them being able to look up some of the tracking information for customers much quicker, getting their orders much quicker.
The reliability of it--the reliability of having it up.
Definitely another--I'd kind of consider it a financial benefit and a non-financial benefit--we're positioned now that we can acquire more businesses, which is in our short-term and long-term goals here at Ready Care--to acquire more businesses. I don't have to worry about changing out phones again, getting new phone numbers, getting new bandwidth. It's not something I want to have to do every year or two years.
Another great--I'd call it a financial benefit, but a non-financial benefit is switching, with the reliability has helped my position. Being an accountant, I prefer to be dealing with the computer and the numbers and the balancing, payroll--the necessary evils of life I really enjoy to do. I prefer not to have to worry about whether I'm getting a dial tone or not, whether I'm getting an Internet connection. Being a small company of about 70 people, being the CFO, I get those responsibilities whether I want them or not, and it's nice to know that if I have a problem, I've got somebody I can count on to call--and in the last six months since we made the changeover, there hasn't been a problem."