Help Vacationers Relax & Stay Connected

Telecom is extremely important for communication between the different areas of the business.

Guests can only make reservations by calling in, so reliable phone service is necessary for the resort to thrive.

Point Sebago’s reservationists were struggling with their phone service, facing limited support and unreliable service.

With their previous cloud communications provider, MacDonald found himself having to pay maintenance fees or hire additional support for a lot of the work.

“For something as simple as changing our caller ID, we’d have to call out and pay to have it changed. It was irritating that they wouldn’t tell us how to do even the smallest tasks on our own.”

In addition to inhibiting their independence, their phones were getting older and failing more.

Call quality was poor, and customer service was much lacking. With these issues in mind and a limited budget, MacDonald began searching online for a new VoIP provider.

He came across Nextiva and got in touch with a sales representative to get more information.

Point Sebago’s top priorities when searching for a new communications provider were price, ease of use, call groups through an Auto Attendant, and reliability of the call center functionality for their reservations team.

Since reservations are the source of income for the resort, the 10-agent call center is central to the resort’s business.

They needed to know that they could handle large influxes of calls in the queues and that they would not lose any customers.

While this was vital, 55 other phone lines also needed attention, and Bob MacDonald wanted to be able to manage them all within one system.

He found that Nextiva enabled him to be in complete control of the system, create call groups, change Auto Attendants, and more through NextOS (Voice). And for a low price with fantastic support!

“I was very skeptical about switching providers; we were promised so much with our previous system, and all the promises were broken. But Nextiva has been open and honest from the start, and they have delivered on everything they said!” MacDonald exclaimed.

With our old communications system, we had to call our service provider to make the simplest of adjustments, and we were charged for just a few quick clicks! With NextOS (Voice), I’m able to make most of the changes we need on my own, and if I’m not sure how to do something, I just call into the wonderful Support team, who always helps me quickly and expertly!

Bob Macdonald

IT Administrator

After making the decision to move forward with Nextiva, an Implementation Manager (IM) guided Bob MacDonald through the process of setting up Point Sebago’s new phone system.

Bob was able to work with his IM to get their numbers ported, new phones provisioned, features and call center configured, and his IM was available to answer any questions he had along the way.

Before their new system was deployed, Bob completed a Network Check with his IM, during which the IM remoted into MacDonald’s computer to check on Internet speeds and make sure their network was ready for their new system.

Thorough training was one of the most important parts of building a strong relationship between Nextiva and Point Sebago.

MacDonald worked with his Implementation Manager at Nextiva to set up call center training, and ‘train the trainer’ sessions so he could pass his knowledge along to the rest of the staff.

These sessions were done over the phone with screen sharing, and MacDonald was able to choose times to speak with his representative.

The Implementation Manager was available throughout the onboarding process to answer any questions or help with set-up.

After being trained, Bob was able to teach the reservationists and remaining staff with ease.

The reservations team has found great success with the Nextiva Call Center Enterprise solution.

They can easily log in to the Nextiva Unity Agent Dashboard and enter into the simultaneous ring queue.

MacDonald commented, “The reservations manager uses the Nextiva Unity Supervisor dashboard regularly. She is so happy that she can watch the stats of how many people are on hold, for how long they’ve been on hold, and more, all in real-time.

It gives her insight into whether or not she should jump on the phones to reduce wait time.”

“Our reservations manager also regularly utilizes the Barge-In feature. If a customer has a tough question or a specific request, it’s easy for a manager to jump on the call to handle the situation,” MacDonald also commented.

The team’s adoption of Nextiva has been swift and well-accepted, as they have seen decreased wait times for their callers.

The reporting features of the call center have been a massive help with reducing the wait times.

The team has been able to track the busiest times of the day and days of the week and adjust staffing to match the areas of need.

Now the staff is more efficient during their hours, and the callers have a much better experience.

Point Sebago relies on a personal touch to differentiate their staff and wants guests to feel like family.

“Our only team that works 24 hours a day is security, so when people call after hours, they are now routed through our Auto Attendant to the security department.

People were previously getting answering machines, but we wanted to have a human at the end of every call. Now that’s possible!” MacDonald was happy to announce.

The Auto Attendant also frees up time for employees, as they don’t have to worry about manually transferring each call that comes in.

People are automatically sent to one of three Call Groups that different contact sectors of the business: reservations, food service, and security.

Point Sebago has been around for over 40 years, and we have no intention of going anywhere. And I’m confident that we can rely on Nextiva to be here too, growing right alongside us.

Bob Macdonald

,IT Administrator

With the Nextiva system, Bob MacDonald is able to configure the Call Center, Auto Attendants, Call Groups, and more through NextOS (Voice).

“With our old communications system, we had to call our service provider to make the simplest of adjustments, and we were charged for just a few quick clicks!

With NextOS (Voice), I’m able to make most of the changes we need on my own, and if I’m not sure how to do something, I just call into the wonderful Support team, which always helps me quickly and expertly!”

“Nextiva Support has been a lifesaver,” MacDonald explained. Point Sebago sees an influx of calls around the summer holidays, and their Internet went down on Memorial Day.

“With our old VoIP system, this would have been a huge deal. But with Nextiva, it was not a problem. When I called in, the Support agent was calm and quick to transfer our calls to our backup lines. Our customers didn’t know anything was different!”