Company Overview
Epic Web Studios is a full-service marketing agency that does it all for clients, no matter the size. From Website Design and Development, Social Media, Digital Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Epic Web Studio’s goal is to help clients compete in today’s ever-changing marketplace through a viable digital marketing strategy.
Committed to helping clients leverage digital marketing techniques to grow their business, CEO David Hunter and Co-founder, Shaun Rajewski started Epic Web Studios in 2009. Headquartered in Erie, Pennsylvania, Epic Web Studios began as a small, single-client web-site development firm, but quickly grew into a full-service digital marketing firm with over five hundred clients in North America and more than sixteen full-time employees.
A loyal customer of NEC, Epic Web Studios started out using the UNIVERGE SV8100 platform, a legacy on-prem communications system from NEC. As time and technology progressed, the need for more unified communications features became increasingly more apparent to David Hunter, CEO of Epic Web Studios. With a growing number of clients and the large shift towards remote working, David knew he needed a flexible, cloud solution to allow his employees to communicate with clients, collaborate cross-functionally and be productive from anywhere, at any time.
THE CHALLENGE
- Managing multiple disparate communication & collaboration tools
- Could not support remote working
- Employees were jumping from one application to another to communicate and service customers
- Lack of Scalability
Solution
Results
- Improved Customer Experience
- Streamlined Internal Communications
- Increased Employee Productivity
- More Scalability
- Better Meeting Insight
- Business Growth
THE CHALLENGE
“A growing, highly mobile workforce created a unique set of challenges.” David Hunter, CEO of Epic Web Studios explains, “With our on-premises system, our teams were restricted to only using voice and email to communicate. Unanswered calls were forwarded to one general voicemail, and emailing back-and-forth became inefficient as the primary mode of communication.” Epic Web Studios needed greater control over how calls could be made, forwarded, and received; they also needed more flexibility in their business communications and more variety in their communication methods.
Before migrating to NEC UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES, Epic relied on various communication and collaboration tools, which was inefficient, costly, and difficult to manage. “We wanted something that was going to be secure, and that was going to be integrated so that we could go from meetings to instant messages to phone conversations and everything in between very easily and seamlessly without needing a number of different accounts and logins,” said Hunter. Epic needed a solution that would provide reliable, real-time communication with robust and fully-integrated features to support employee productivity.
Epic Web Studios launched a comprehensive search for a new Voice and Contact Center service. David describes his search, “We did a ton of research, Q&A’s, and trials with different cloud platforms. The number of players in this space was overwhelming- yet surprisingly disappointing.” With other options reviewed, costs were too high, functionality was missing, or the solution just didn’t meet Epic Web Studio’s needs. Luckily, NEC launched UNIVERGE BLUE as David was researching new platforms.
As our business has grown, we needed a remote-friendly solution that converges the features of many platforms into one integrated solution - UNIVERGE BLUE gave us that.
– David Hunter,
CEO Epic Web Studios
THE SOLUTION
David explains why he ultimately selected NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES, “At the end of the day, we chose UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES because the features were the strongest, the transition was going to be easy, and the price point was extremely competitive.”
In addition to migrating to UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Epic Web Studios also deployed UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution to help route calls to the appropriate department and deliver a superior customer service experience regardless of the time of day.
“Working with NEC provides us with the ease and confidence of having our communications and contact center managed by a very secure and dependable provider,” says David. “In addition to the excellent 24/7 support service and quick response times, UNIVERGE BLUE offers us a lot of depth when it comes to customization and options.”
David Continues, “The deployment was pretty much effortless. When we moved from our on-premises solution to UNIVERGE BLUE we were up and running in a matter of hours, it was incredible.” David adds that his employees were up and running just as quickly due to the platform’s user-friendly design. “The UNIVERGE BLUE user interface is incredibly intuitive. Learning the features and applications was a frictionless experience for employees. They were able to be functional and productive right away,” he added.
THE RESULTS
Customer Satisfaction is the #1 criterion for success at Epic Web Studios, and UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES has proven itself by passing the test.
“We have seen a significant decrease in the number of back-and-forth emails thanks to UNIVERGE BLUE. Our clients call us directly and we can have one-click video-conferencing meetings with them. We have seen a major increase in our productivity because of UNIVERGE BLUE” explained David.
David has also seen an improvement in how teams collaborate and communicate internally and says the robust feature set has helped drive productivity and speed to project completion. Additionally, David notes that UNIVERGE BLUE has provided sales teams with better insight while prospecting new business, which has allowed them to close more sales
Finally, because of its streamlined communication and increased productivity, Epic has been able to scale its business and grow their client base. “Because we were able to provision more users very quickly, we're able to take on more projects, and that has led to the growth of the company, which has been phenomenal recently thanks to UNIVERGE BLUE.” David concludes, “I can’t recommend UNIVERGE BLUE enough.”
LOOKING AHEAD
As David looks ahead, he is confident that UNIVERGE BLUE will be there to support all Epic Web Studio’s communication needs and enable his business to thrive no matter where his employees or clients are located.
“As our business has grown and changed over time, we've had times where we've had to be remote and we've had times where we're on-premises. Thankfully, UNIVERGE BLUE has been there for us in in both facets,” David shared.
“We're no longer opposed to working remotely, and we're no longer opposed to working in separate teams and coming together. It's all because UNIVERGE BLUE allows us to be right there at the right place and time.”
“As technology evolves, NEC is always on the cutting edge of new ways of working to make our communications more convenient and secure. This bevy of new features included with UNIVERGE BLUE offers us new opportunities to become even more efficient and productive with our business communications – all at a reasonable cost.”
