The most valuable feature is the admin platform that we work with. It allows us a very centralized approach for doing things and it allows us to manage and control everything right from the very top. We could do that before, but the features that we have with RCN seem more extensive than the previous company that we worked with.

The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior.

We can do lots of things: We can do call groups, we can do work with our extensions, we can set up our account codes, we can take a look at call logs. There are a multiplicity of miscellaneous settings that are allowed for each user and for the Admin. There's a simplicity to it. It seems they use KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. It works for everybody because, when I'm not here responding to it, my technicians are; sometimes my network guy is; sometimes our students are interacting with it. It creates a very easy flow for working through the product and the interface.

The automatic upgrades are the best thing that ever happened, because we don't see them, we don't feel them, we just know that they happened, after the fact. What they've done, at least for us, is that we haven't had or felt a crash whatsoever, nor have we felt the disruption as a result of the updates. That tells me that work goes into them to get them done right, and that they really test the code and test the information in updates so that they work properly.

Feature-wise, the price was right for what we were looking for. They're our internet service provider as well, so it was an easy decision to have both our primary ISP and our ISP for our VoIP system be the same company.

A lot of users use the voicemail to email, that's a nice feature to have. Voicemail will come to me as a .wav file and, if I have a phone, I can just click on the .wav file and listen to it. Or I can play it on my computer. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, you'll be able to play it. It's not similar to the Verizon or the AT&T service where they just transcribe the whole thing. It's a recording that plays it back.

It has a lot of other features:

• Do not disturb.
• FollowMe.
• You can check your voicemails on the portal; delete or forward them; if you delete, you can go back and un-delete on the portal. You have the option for them to stay on the portal and send them to your email as well. 
• On the portal you can see a call log of who called you and when they called you. 
• There's a call manager. 
• There's a button that you can click on and see a directory with all the users in the office. You can search by last name or first name. 
• The touchscreen on the phone is LCD-based. It's a large screen and you can flip through the users, scroll down, scroll up.

Another feature we leverage is that the phones can be programmed with a softbot, where you program it to dial a number. We have Vonage for international calling to reduce costs on international service. I program the Vonage number into that bot on the phone. Users call it, enter a PIN, and they can call anywhere in the world for lower costs.

The Office Mobility feature has been the most satisfying one because it allows part of my team to be remote at an event and still be active with the phone and their client base. They're always in reach during office hours. It also gives me the freedom to work remotely too, which is amazing. The quality of the calls doesn't diminish between using the Office Mobility and the desk phone.

We like the administrative features RCN has available. It is important that we can balance call loads through programming options, and have full control of our messaging, schedules, etc.

I really like the portal. It makes listening to your messages so much easier as well as changing your voice mail. Some of the attorneys use the Follow Me where the phone will follow them. They like that feature. The scheduling is also a very nice feature.

The sidecars on the main phones that we use, the ones that receive the calls, are really important. They help us to distribute calls to people, from reception. That's an important starting point for us.

The Hunt Group, is the most valuable feature. There are different modes. You can choose round-robin, you can choose priority-for-agents, you can choose the order of agents. There are all kinds of different mechanisms for the next operator to take a call. We find that valuable especially if someone is training. You can change that mode straight up and say, "Okay, this stronger guy is going to take the calls until we get this other person up to speed."

Other than two years ago where, once every couple of weeks or so there was a lot of jitter, we've had zero downtime. It's a solid 97 percent uptime.

Another thing that's really cool is that we had a gentleman who had to be out of the office for a while, he was going to work from home. We literally took his desk to his house with his phone and he was up and running, no configuration or anything else. He just plugged it right into his home router and he was up and running, like he was here in the office. These are truly IP phones.

Regarding the automatic upgrades, I don't even notice that they occur. They reboot them at midnight, so whatever these guys are doing at night, we don't even see it happening.

It's basic internet. The ease of the desktop phones is a valuable feature.

The uptime is excellent. We haven't had any issues. We haven't had any downtime.

We use call recording. It's important to us because there's information that's passed from the customer to us. We sell ready-mixed concrete. It's very important that we get the right information and if there's ever a dispute, we've got that recorded phone call to know if we've done something incorrectly or if the customer ordered incorrectly. That has been very helpful to us.

We also use the recorded calls for training purposes. We spend a fair amount of time going through the phone calls with our dispatchers to improve their phone etiquette as well as how they take in orders, etc.

The thing I like best about them is that they have a local office that has been very responsive. As soon as we have a problem, somebody comes out here.