Constantly ringing telephones with customers inquiring about store hours and directions were driving the owner of a small sports equipment shop in Yorktown to madness.
“Her problem was that the phone was ringing all the time, and she had to hire three people just to answer the calls,” said Thomas W. Jacobs, president and CEO of Mount Kisco-based BNCVoice, a provider of data, voice and Internet telecommunications solutions for small- to mid-sized businesses.
Jacobs, a veteran telecommunications executive, was able to bring the store into the new millennium with a simple auto-attendant recording prompting callers to press 1 for store hours and 2 for directions.
The difference was immediate; the store owner even called Jacobs to make sure her phones were working because they stopped ringing all the time.
That”™s the kind of productivity increase Jacobs, who structured his company around the telecommunications needs of small business owners, hopes to achieve for his clients.
“From a five-phone Allstate Insurance office to a 50-phone wealth management company, businesses all have different needs,” Jacobs said.
BNCVoice can personalize telecommunications packages for offices of any size, with multiple locations, and across state boundaries, as well as small businesses with a single location.
When conducting market research about voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) technology, Jacobs identified what business owners want in a phone system: significant savings, good quality, no capital expenditure to install the system and excellent customer service.
“Those are the four major issues out there and we”™ve addressed all four,” Jacobs said.
The savings are huge “because you don”™t have to pay for the local exchange carrier anymore, and you use the current bandwidth that you have to make phone calls,” Jacobs said. Â
The company guarantees quality and uses a special router to ensure calls don”™t get dropped.
Also, “we took a look at the equipment costs and we decided we were going to fund the equipment for the customer, so there is no capital expenditure for our service, and in this day and age, that”™s a huge benefit to a small company,” Jacobs said.
As for customer service, the company”™s relationship managers are in charge of accounts. “You do not call 1-800-BNCVoice, you call Barbara,” Jacobs said. “She knows your system, she knows your service, she has access to make decisions on any changes that need to be made and she”™s accessible 24/7,” Jacobs said.
This month BNCVoice launched its services to the entire tri-state region.Â
“Our philosophy on support is to have that relationship manager available to you on-site, so you can”™t be five hours away,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs founded OPEX Communications in Chicago in 1995. A small startup telephone company selling telecommunications services nationwide, OPEX quickly grew to $50 million in revenue with 220,000 customers and was acquired in 2007. Prior to OPEX, Jacobs made several career advancements at MCI that led him to a national account manager position, where he managed accounts such as Phillip Morris, Pepsi-Cola, and Kraft Foods.Â
