Adams Publishing Group is a conglomerate of small community newspapers with offices throughout the United States. APG Media of Chesapeake is one of the regional companies under the Adams Publishing Group umbrella, and consists of 33 publications in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and 15 physical offices.
With 200 employees in the region and a readership of more than a million and a half people per week, communication is absolutely vital to the organization.
Develop a More Mobile Workflow
Reporters need to receive tips, the customer satisfaction team needs to renew subscriptions and handle complaints, and managers need to keep in touch with their staff.
In 2012, David Fike, President of the Chesapeake region, wanted to push regional offices to transition to a more mobile workflow and left this responsibility with David Alltop, the Regional IT/Pagination Director.
Alltop is responsible for producing newspapers, artwork, and putting pages together, as well as managing all technology needs for the Chesapeake region.
When given the task of looking for a new, more mobile communications plan for his district, he took a look at the things that were not working within their current system.
I took a couple of months to play with demos from VoIP providers, and eventually decided to go with Nextiva. The support I received was amazing. The back-end environment really helped to sell us on Nextiva too.
Transfer Calls With Ease and Save Customer Time
There were many issues with the copper lines that they were using for their phone structure.
One of the most cumbersome problems was the inability to transfer calls.
Each call into the wrong office location, incorrect contact, etc., meant that they would have to instruct the caller to hang up and call another number, costing that person valuable time, and sometimes losing the business of people who didn’t want to go through this tedious process.
Employees even began giving out their personal cell phone numbers to import contacts to avoid this mess.
Alltop commented, “When a member of our staff separated from the company, it made it very difficult for our customers and our news sources to be able to reach us. By the employee giving out a personal cell number, it was difficult to update all of the inbound contacts that the change in staffing had occurred.”
Go Wireless
After doing some initial research into more mobile-friendly options, Alltop began looking into VoIP providers and virtual fax companies to start the transition to going wireless.
“I took a couple of months to play with demos from VoIP providers, and eventually decided to go with Nextiva. The support I received was amazing.
The back-end environment really helped to sell us on Nextiva too. The interface was great compared to competitors, and it was usable for people who aren’t phone and technology experts. And having a low price didn’t hurt either!”
