ZCorum Providing Managed Broadband Services and End User Support for the City
Alpharetta, GA (October 9, 2009) — In a move to provide an enhanced level of customer service to some Bay Area broadband customers, ZCorum, a managed services provider, and San Bruno Municipal Cable TV recently signed a long-term agreement. As part of the deal, ZCorum now provides 24 x 7 technical support for the municipal cable company’s Internet and voice customers and after-hours support for its cable TV customers.
Until recently, San Bruno Cable received support services from Parasun, which was acquired by IBBS during the latter part of 2008. San Bruno Cable carefully considered its options after the IBBS acquisition of its service provider, and contacted ZCorum, an IBBS competitor, to explore opportunities to enhance support services and streamline operating costs. In May, the San Bruno City Council authorized the transition to ZCorum. At the City Council meeting, Tenzin Gyaltsen, San Bruno's Cable TV Director stated “ZCorum presented San Bruno Cable with an opportunity to reduce operating costs and expand the coverage of technical support services for all services including Cable, Internet and Phone.”
San Bruno Cable and ZCorum worked together to ensure a smooth transition from IBBS. ZCorum had staff on-site for the transition. Said Steve Firpo, Business Manager at San Bruno, "The engineers who came in were very knowledgeable. They worked hand in hand with our staff to implement the overnight cut-over, and tested the system afterwards to make sure everything was working properly before daybreak. We've been very happy with the level of support from ZCorum both to our staff and our customers".
In addition to support for San Bruno Cable's Internet customers, ZCorum also handles 24 x 7 support for their voice customers, working closely with their VoIP provider, Momentum Telecom. Plus, by moving to ZCorum, Gyaltsen explained that San Bruno was able to enhance the level of service for their Cable TV customers. "Prior to ZCorum, we were dependent upon an after hours answering service for cable related issues. It’s nice to finally have one company handling all the customer service issues.”
According to Gyaltsen, ZCorum is able to address cable service related questions, refresh cable set top boxes, and confirm and report channel outages. “They have visibility into the Great Lakes billing system to confirm Pay-Per-View orders, and can direct customers to where they can make payment as needed. Our video customers are pleased with the simplified and expanded level of after hours customer service."
Firpo said that other tools offered by ZCorum, such as the TruVizion data analytics application, also influenced San Bruno's decision to switch providers. TruVizion provides both real-time and historical modem diagnostics information, but also aggregates information from the CMTS, making it easier for cable broadband providers to visualize network information and track down issues. The staff at San Bruno likes the application because they can view all the data related to a customer or a piece of network equipment on a single screen, rather than switching between screens and applications as they did before.
Transitioning a large number of customers from one service provider to another is no easy task; so, the quality and value offered by the new partner must represent a significant improvement. "The enhanced level of technical and customer support that we receive from ZCorum made the transition worthwhile ", said Gyaltsen.
