TLCVision  

Business Need

"We were in a position to deal with two problems. One, we had a number of sites that over a period of time had gone and found their own phone providers, so we had far too many contracts and far too many phone lines in some centers, and we were opening a whole bunch of new centers. The company had launched an initiative that would see us open 25 centers and we needed to find a vendor to handle both scenarios--transfer from old to new and an entirely new environment. We ended up looking at our current vendor and it wasn't there, so our goal was to find a provider through which we could literally provide an address, a date, and have our phone and Internet installed.

Why Qwest

"Qwest was the only one that came back and said that they would take care of getting analog lines if that's what I required; they would take care of the Qwest product if that's what was required. I could view them as an extension of my team and they would solve the problem. The other vendors would come back with 'Well, if we're the main vendor for that area, we'll certainly take care of the analog lines, but if not, you'll have to take care--' They had all manner of caveats in terms of what they could and would do. Essentially, my account team at Qwest said 'You know what? I'll do what's required to make this happen', and that's the way it's turned out. They ultimately came in as one of the two lowest prices, but they were the only vendor that was willing to step up and just do what needed to be done; whether or not it was specifically a Qwest product they sold, they would coordinate whatever needed to be coordinated to make it happen--and that's what drove it right there. You know, they were the right price and definitely the right account team."

Customer Service

"The customer service has been incredible. And you know, working with the Qwest reps has just been amazing because they deal with problems quickly, they take them serious, they keep me informed as to what we're doing and why it's happening and what we need to do to resolve it. So that's really when it comes down to the proof is how well you're dealt with after it's going, especially when you get a large number in. I mean, we're at number 33 and counting. We're continuing on down the road here and there's been really no difference in the level of service right from the very first one to the 34th that I'm working on right now. It's consistently the same.

We had one occasion to escalate early on in the implementation of the IA product. I guess Qwest was going through some small bugs or hiccups in the VoIP [voice over Internet Protocol] product itself, so we escalated past the account rep and it was dealt with very well. You know, I ended up with a senior executive explaining exactly what was going on. He was very frank about what problem they were having and what they were doing to resolve it. He made no attempt to fluff it off as some minor thing; he took it seriously and it made me feel like we were partners in the problem. And once they came to an understanding of what the problem was and how they were resolving it, he got back to me and let me know. Everybody has problems, but it's nice to know that they're acknowledged and you get the truth."