Bob Latham is a managing partner at IBG Business, a national mergers and acquisitions advisory firm. The company helps middle-market business owners buy and sell companies across eight U.S. offices. When a buyer or seller calls in about an ongoing deal, reaching the right advisor quickly matters.
Challenge
For years, IBG used Grasshopper as their phone system. It was a standard setup with a menu tree: press one for this person, press two for that person. The problem was that messages were slipping through the cracks.
"We tended to not get a lot of the messages that were left because of that," Bob says.
Beyond missed messages, Bob found Grasshopper difficult to manage. Adjusting settings or troubleshooting problems was a hassle, and the bill kept climbing.
"I hated dealing with them every time I had a problem or needed to adjust something," he says. "It seemed kind of difficult, and their prices kept creeping up."
Bob started exploring alternatives. He looked at two or three other options, but they all required heavy configuration. "Everything was 'Here's how you set it up. Here's how you program it,'" he says. "And I'm like, 'You know, I don't want a job as a programmer.'"
Solution
Then Bob found Upfirst. He tried the demo and thought it looked straightforward.
"I just played around with the demo on Upfirst," he says. "I thought, 'Well, that seems pretty easy.'"
Setup took less than 30 minutes. Bob gave Upfirst a link to the IBG website and their team page, which included each advisor's name, email, and phone number. He also uploaded what IBG calls their "deal book," a list of all ongoing client engagements.
That detail makes a difference. When a caller mentions a specific transaction, the answering service already knows which deal they're referring to and can route them to the right person.
Results
The most noticeable improvement has been live call transfers. When someone calls IBG, Upfirst identifies the right advisor and connects the caller directly. It's fast enough that the advisor can pick up while the person is still on the line.
"It's been forwarding them, directly to that person, and it's fast enough that we're able to catch the phone call," Bob says. "That's been much better hit rate in terms of taking a live call."
Spam has dropped too. Fewer junk messages are making it through to the team, which means less time sorting through noise.
Bob says the thing that stands out most is how the system handles unpredictable callers. "I think the way that it just adapts to whatever people throw at it is the best thing," he says.
"Overall I think it's been a success and the rate has been very good."