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September 29, 2009 (FinancialWire) -- Since the flower company Flower Patch deployed the 8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Virtual Office hosted IP (Internet Protocol) phone solution seven months ago, the floral wholesaler is saving 80% off its monthly phone bill which had grown to a steep $13,000 a month since opening its doors in 1977.
At each of its nine physical locations, together with its corporate office, Flower Patch had relied on doing business and taking customer orders the traditional way. They hired employees based on each location's seasonally fluctuating demand for its floral services, with Valentine's Day and Mothers Day being its busiest time of the year. As much as they tried, it was simply a fact of doing business that when a busy day came, calls into their 13 seat call center inevitably were dropped while customers waited on hold for a florist to check on supply. And, there were times when customers wanted to place an order at a specific Flower Patch location and inadvertently found themselves on the phone with a florist miles away.
Several years ago, Flower Patch adopted a call center model in an effort to have more control over service quality. Although there were cost savings (phone costs were down from $13,000 to $9,500), there were still gaps in efficiency that couldn't be ignored. Their first attempt at VoIP with a local provider put the business "in a very bad place" according to Parrish when, one Valentine's Day, the phones went dead. "We did get our costs down to $5200/month when we moved over to the local provider, but it wasn't worth the loss of business and havoc we experienced that day. They just couldn't support us."
Parrish's business put some effort into finding a VoIP phone service provider that would help them "exceed the expectations of their customers" and their relationship with 8x8, Inc. began soon after.
8x8's Virtual Office VoIP phone service allows small businesses like Flower Patch to deploy a full-featured enterprise class phone system without running in the red. How? By using the existing broadband Internet connection businesses already have to deliver digital quality dial tone plus business class features remotely, on a hosted basis, the 8x8 Virtual Office solution eliminates the need for expensive, on- premise PBX equipment and saves the average company at least 50% on recurring monthly service charges. The combination of this doubling of resources, savings on upfront equipment charges, cost efficiencies of VoIP calls and the ability for business owners to configure their phones themselves without paying a hefty maintenance fee to have someone come in and do it for them is what prudent businesses today find very compelling.
For added flexibility, Flower Patch equipped all of its locations with 8x8 cordless IP phones, so florists no longer had to put down a call to check the store's cooler (where inventory is kept fresh to be used as needed) to be sure they can fill a request.
8x8 Virtual Office has brought Flower Patch's monthly communications cost to just $1,700 from a whopping $13,000. That's money that will help Utah's #1 rose retailer continue to help its customers delight, surprise, and touch people's hearts for years to come.
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Free annual reports for companies mentioned in the news are available through the Free Annual Reports Service (http://investrend.ar.wilink.com/?level=279).
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