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SunPorch is a Westport, CT-based manufacturer of ready-to-assemble sunroom kits. These are the structures that enable homeowners to turn their deck or patio into an enclosed space to ward off the elements.

 

The company does quite a large volume of catalog business, and assigns a series of different phone numbers to specific targeted advertising campaigns. Recently the company was faced with the decision to outsource their contact center to a third-party or keep their center in house, which would have been a more expensive proposition.

 

Well, by turning to a provider who offered an open source-based contact center solution, SunPorch was not only able to keep their call center in-house; they actually claim to have saved approximately $100,000 as a result of their decision.

 

That decision, as announced this morning, was to choose Fonality’s PBXtra Call Center, reportedly selecting the solution over other offerings from the likes of Avaya, Cisco and 3Com (News - Alert).

 

For one thing, PBXtra Call Center enables SunPorch to track the success rate of individual advertisements, which in turn allows them to eliminate unnecessary ad spending and track campaigns to better define and measure new revenue-generating opportunities.

 

According to Leo Mueller, director of marketing at SunPorch, “Thanks to PBXtra Call Center we’ve been able to more accurately target our advertising dollars and have reduced our annual overall expenses by $100,000.”

 

Another benefit the company realized from the deployment of Fonality’s (News - Alert) solution was the ability to react quickly when faced with a natural disaster. SunPorch was able to rapidly set up a customer response system in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, which disrupted operations at the company’s Louisville, KY manufacturing facility. SunPorch management was able to log in remotely, leveraging Fonality’s hybrid-hosted Anywhere Management feature to record an emergency greeting, which helped customers keep abreast of the situation, as the PBXtra system re-routed calls to the company’s CT headquarters.

 

Fonality has responded aggressively to customers whose business was disrupted during Hurricane Ike, offering to provide a replacement phone system to any of its customers whose service has been terminated due to the hurricane. The new phone systems will be offered to active Fonality customers who are under an active support agreement and operate their businesses within the affected areas. Fonality will send a new replacement phone system server, cover shipping costs and phone installation for no cost.

 

Said Fonality CEO, Chris Lyman (News - Alert), “We have a responsibility to any customer overwhelmed by this storm to help them get their phones and their business operations back on track as quickly as possible”

 

For a more complete case study on how SunPorch was able to leverage Fonality’s solution, please click here.