Business Telephone Companies Ranked (Customer Service Hold Times)

Telephone Provider Lies Uncovered…

How many times have you called your telephone provider and heard “We’re experiencing higher than normal call volume.” Which is often followed by “Your call is important to us.” It’s become so commonplace we don’t think twice when hearing those recordings. But if we stop and think about it, we all know it’s a lie. They choose to keep you on-hold and unless there is an outage of services, telephone providers can accurately estimate how many calls they receive on any given day… AKA ‘higher than normal call volume’ is a flat out lie. They don’t value your business enough to hire staff to handle your call immediately. In our humble opinion, we believe telephone providers are motivated to keep you on-hold. Hoping that you give up. They choose profit at the expense of great customer service.

Sadly this is the reality for millions who choose business telephone companies that clearly don’t think your call is important. If they truly valued your business, they would value your time. They wouldn’t force you to wait anywhere from 20 minutes to over 1 hour for a representative who will most likely transfer you to another department. If you think the waiting was over, you’d be wrong. You’ll be waiting on-hold to speak with the next department.

Our Approach To Customer Service

As with many disruptors, B1 Communications takes a very different (and fresh) approach to customer service. We believe your time is better spent working on your business. Not sitting on-hold listening to awful music for an hour. As such, we have a few promises that we make to each and every customer.

1. 1. We only hire local, Vancouver based customer support staff
   2. We focus exclusively on Business telephone services. We’re experts
   3. We never make you wait on-hold. We answer our calls within seconds, not hours
   4. We only hire highly experienced team members who can handle every type of call
   5. We take personal accountability for each call

We believe our customers deserve the very best experience possible. We build relationships with each customer and understand their business needs. There is an old saying that goes something like “Customer service is an investment, not an expense.” It’s a philosophy that not all phone providers subscribe too.

We Decided To Call Our Main Competitor

We wanted to be fair to our main competitor. Giving Telus an opportunity to prove us wrong. We were actually hopeful that Telus had improved there approach to customer service for the betterment of the telephone industry. After years of keeping their customers on-hold Telus would actually change their approach and deliver great customer service.

TELUS Business Connect

More customers switch to B1 Communications from Telus than any other provider, and we wanted to see if the wait times were part of the reason. We called their Business ADSL & phone inquiries line and requested customer support using telephone number: 1-800-361-3311.

First Attempt

• • No surprise here, the first message we heard was: “We are experiencing higher than expected wait times.”
  • Followed by: “Your Estimated wait time is over 1 hour”
  • After 7 minutes and 38 seconds the music stopped and the phone started ringing…. Could it be? Telus has actually improved their customer service and we will be greeted by a highly trained employee? This was a shock considering we just heard the message about 1 hour wait times. Sadly the phone stopped ringing after 2 minutes followed by silence. 10 long minutes of silence later, the music resumed. We aren’t sure what happened.
  • Sadly after 27 minutes Telus dropped our call. If we were a customer experiencing a problem, we would be extremely frustrated.

Second Attempt – Roosters Crocking In The Philippines!

• • We received the same message regarding higher call volume and an estimate beyond 1 hour.
  • Unlike our first call, this one seems to be working properly with hold-music during our entire hold-time.
  • Our call hold-time was a painful 97 minutes and we confirmed there were no major network outages.
  • The TELUS Business representative was located in the Philippines and there were roosters crocking in the background. (The roosters aren’t something you can makeup)

Our Biggest Competitive Advantage

There are a number of reasons you may leave Telus in search for better business telephone companies. There are various VoIP features that Telus doesn’t want you to know about and there is better customer service elsewhere. For instance, B1 Communications delivers instant customer support with Vancouver based team members. We offer reliable phone services and can often save your business upward of 20% monthly. Over 80% of our customers come from Telus. They tell us that frustrating customer service, lack of flexible features and price are their primary motivations.

If you’re a Vancouver business and looking for a reliable VoIP telephone provider.
Our team is here. contact us today for a custom quote.