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Max Spavron Phone System Success Story
RingCentral Online recently spoke with RingCentral customer and Bay area-entrepreneur Max Spavron about how he juggles several businesses while trying to maintain a sense of balance. His companies include Gobagger.com, Calpros.com, and the Design Factory.
First of all, what kind of businesses to you own?
MS: I own a web site design company, a manufacturing facility, and I own mortgage companies. I'm very entrepreneurial.
So you have separate toll free numbers for each business. How do you manage them all?
MS: I have a toll free number for GoBagger.com, I have one for my mortgage company, and I have another for my web site design company. For Gobagger, it's pretty simple. We put the number on top of our web pages and in this particular case I have calls go directly to voicemail. The announcement says, "Do not hang up. You have just reached the Gobagger sales line. Someone will call you right away, just leave your name and phone number," and the moment the caller leaves a message the system sends a text message alert that A) tells me that I've got a message waiting and B) shows the caller ID of the number they called from and then C) I can go into my email and there's a .WAV file [the recorded voicemail] in there. I mean isn't that the coolest thing in the world? I could be on the beach, I could be having dinner, anywhere, doing my other business, and it lets me know that I have a customer waiting.
And how has this helped your business?
MS: My response time has been amazing because of that. All I have to do is excuse myself from whatever I'm doing and call the client back within seconds of his call.
What about your other businesses? You use RingCentral a little differently for them.
MS: When it comes to the Web site design and mortgage companies, I have calls forwarded to me. So calls go to my business line, my cell phone, then my home number, then my other office, and then ultimately it goes to my voicemail. And I love that, too; in other words, I don't want to miss those calls.
Tell me about the scalability aspect for you, because that must be critical for someone juggling several business.
MS: With your system, when I want my phone to ring in my Great Aunt Myrtle's house, I go into the web site and just tell it to do that. To attempt anything like that with a phone company is like an act of congress.
And let's say that I want to add a number. Let's say I'm going to Lake Tahoe. I'll just add that Lake Tahoe number to my follow me list and calls will be directed to it instantaneously. That's just phenomenal and that's just scratching the surface. I've actually called all of my friends and my girlfriend and I told them, "you have to see this." Finally, someone who actually has a product that does more than what you charge for.
What made you switch from your old 800 number provider to RingCentral?
MS: I am still getting bills for fifty dollars a month for an 800 number from another provider that I barely use and I can't shut it down because I don't want to lose a potential customer. So I pay fifty dollars for a featureless, flat 800 number that does one thing: it rings. For half the money with RingCetntral, I get voicemail, follow me, systems, manageability. It's better, cheaper, faster, there are more services, and it allows someone to manage their business the way it should be managed.
Do you use the online fax features?
MS: For one of my numbers, I use the online fax feature all the time. I also like the fact, again, that you can change its format. I think you can choose between TIF and PDF, which is kind of cool.
Which feature does the best job to address your business needs?
MS: Being alerted immediately via email and/or text message. But really, it's the fact that it's scalable- -If I do want the feature, I click on it; If I don't want it, I don't click on it. The fact is that whatever feature I use, it might change. 'I'm on vacation. We're growing. Did I get a new office? Did we move? Do I have a new employee?' In other words, whatever may be happening in my small business, and small businesses because they shuck and jive, because they're owned by a husband and a wife or two buddies or whatever, things change. It's very acquiescent...To scale these features on almost a whim, that's probably the most impressive part.
Can you give me another real-life example?
MS: A while ago I had my cell phone stolen in a pub. I had to immediately shut it off. I have another cell phone that I use for other things, so I went into my RingCentral account and switched the alert number to the other cell phone.
I can scale it and shuck and jive.
