We now have an all-cloud communications platform that lets our staff work reliably from anywhere. We got there with a surprisingly problem-free implementation. And even though our new phone solution is superior to what we had, we’ve managed to lower our telecom costs. Vredevoogd couldn’t be happier with RingCentral.
Mike Sikkema
IT Coordinator
Helping Michigan homes stay safe and comfortable for 50 years
When their home’s furnace or air conditioning unit needs fixing, the residents of Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids have a longtime trusted service provider: Vredevoogd Heating & Cooling.
With a half-century reputation for fast, outstanding service, Vredevoogd (pronounced “vray-de-vogue”) has become the largest provider of residential HVAC maintenance and replacement services in Western Michigan. The company maintains a 4.8 average rating across more than 115,000 customer reviews.
Looking for a seamless transition from Mitel system
Mike Sikkema, IT Coordinator for Vredevoogd, explains that the company had migrated many years early from an analog POTS telephony environment to a VoIP system from ShoreTel (later Mitel). Although that system served the company well for some time, in recent years the local telecom component of Vredevoogd’s phone infrastructure became less and less reliable.
Another challenge, Mike notes, was that the on-prem Mitel hardware offered limited capabilities for remote work — something the company hadn’t prioritized until COVID.
“In a business like ours, most of the work comes in by phone. We were ready to move away from the old Mitel desk phones because we wanted to make sure that another sudden shift to remote work wouldn’t be as disruptive as the transition we went through in 2020. We also wanted a phone solution that would be more reliable than the infrastructure provided by the local telecom carrier.”
All indications pointed to RingEX
When his team began looking for a cloud communications solution to replace Vredevoogd’s on-prem Mitel infrastructure, Mike points out that multiple trusted sources had the same recommendation.
“Our longtime managed service provider, Quantum Leap, suggested RingEX — both because the solution is outstanding and because they knew RingCentral’s relationship with Mitel would make our transition much more seamless.” Then, Mike adds, Vredevoogd’s sister company made the same suggestion. “Another business under our parent company migrated to RingCentral and had great results — so at that point, we knew this was the right decision.”
RingCentral Professional Services helps create a trouble-free implementation
Mike explains that he felt even further vindicated in his decision to select RingCentral when he began working with the Professional Services team on configuration, testing, and planning for the migration.
“It took very little work to move our telephony environment from the Mitel system to RingCentral,” he says. “Part of that is because of the Mitel-RingCentral partnership, which definitely made things run more smoothly. But a big part of it was also the expertise of the Professional Services team. They helped us basically replicate our full telephony setup on our new RingCentral environment, and they were always there to help when we needed them.”
RingCentral's proprietary Migration Accelerator tool removed the hassle and expedited the RingCentral-Mitel migration process so that what typically would have taken weeks was reduced down to mere days or hours.
For example, by leveraging the Migration Accelerator, user details and existing call flows (IVRs) from the existing Mitel system were automatically extracted and enhanced into ready-to-review reports which the RingCentral Professional Services team then worked alongside Vredevoogd to review and seamlessly provision into RingEX.
I was shocked at how smooth the cutover was. You expect some problems in migrations like this. But here’s what happened: Our old phones stopped ringing, calls started ringing on the new RingCentral system, and our employees started taking calls through the softphone on their computers. And that was it. A total non-event.
Mike Sikkema
IT Coordinator
Vredevoogd gains mobility, reliability, and cost-savings
One of the most important operational benefits Vredevoogd has experienced since migrating to RingCentral, Mike explains, is the fact that all employees now have full communications capability from anywhere.
“We’ve always had an office-based culture, but we know that we might need the ability anytime to quickly set up many of our employees remotely. RingCentral gives us that peace of mind — knowing any teams, and especially our call center agents, can continue serving customers even if they have to start working from home.”
Mike also points out that the service reliability has been outstanding with RingCentral — another significant improvement over the company’s previous telecom environment. “Our local phone provider’s copper infrastructure was getting a bit unreliable,” he says, “and we just can’t afford service outages considering how important phone calls are to our business. With RingCentral, we’ve never had any downtime issues. The service is there for us all the time.”
Saving money with RingCentral
Finally, Mike notes that although the company considers the migration to RingCentral a tremendous upgrade over its previous phone infrastructure, Vredevoogd has in fact lowered its telephony costs as a RingCentral customer.
Upgrade to cloud communications with RingCentral
Mitel customers like Vredevoogd that make the switch from their on-premise solution to RingEX unleash the full potential of an intuitive all-in-one tool with support from dedicated teams, top-notch flexibility, lowered operational costs, and more!
Learn more about the exclusive RingCentral-Mitel partnership here and how it can improve the way you do business.
We set up our previous phone system about 15 years ago, so we anticipated that upgrading to any new system would cost us more. But to look at our RingCentral bill at the end of the month and see that we’re actually spending less than we were — even though we’re now getting so much more from our communications solution — that makes us extremely pleased.
Mike Sikkema
IT Coordinator
