Network Real Estate is a real estate agency based out of Wilmington, N.C. Founded in 1982 by Bob and Marilyn McCoy, Network Real Estate is dedicated to providing the highest standard of customer service. The business employs dozens of agents and support staff and operates out of three locations in the greater Wilmington area.

The Problem

Network Real Estate was using a traditional PBX phone system for many years. The system was still functioning, but the parts had been discontinued. If a serious problem developed, parts had to be tracked down from an existing source, which could take days or even longer. The cost for parts was also dramatically increasing.

“We were concerned that our phones were going to go down and stay down for an extended period of time. Our business would have stopped,” said Bob McKoy, a founder of Network Real Estate.

The Solution

Network Real Estate turned to Teleco of Wilmington, who had been providing the company with telecom services since around 1990, for help.
“We’re a local company, and we like dealing with a local company,” Bob McKoy said.

Teleco helped Network Real Estate find a solution that would not only eliminate the company’s current maintenance concerns, but also prevent similar concerns from developing in the future. Star2Star Communications automatically updates its system for all users, offers free next-day parts replacement on all systems, and uses technology with no moving (and more likely to breakdown) parts. Star2Star was able to alleviate the company’s uptime concerns in other ways. Star2Star guarantees 99.999 percent uptime and has experienced 100 percent uptime since 2011.

The Result

In addition to resolving Network Real Estate’s maintenance and uptime concerns, Star2Star was able to provide the company with many other benefits. All three of the company’s locations are now on a single, unified system, simplifying management and reducing costs.

The switchover proved much easier than Bob McKoy anticipated.

“We anticipating having some big outages, but we didn’t have anything like that. The transition was smooth,” Bob McKoy said.

Perhaps the greatest benefit that Network Real Estate has seen is the increased mobility and customer service that the system allows.

"We love our Find Me/Follow Me feature. Several of us, including myself, think that’s the best feature,” he said.

Find Me/Follow Me automatically routes calls made to an office phone to a cell phone or remote phone according to user-defined specifications, or rings all at once. This feature is especially useful to real estate agents, who are both often out of the office and have time-sensitive calls coming in. “When we’re aware from our desk, it finds us. Before if you didn’t check a message, you wouldn’t know until the next time you were at your desk. Monday morning would come, and you look like a jerk because you missed an emergency call or lost a potential sale opportunity,” he said.

Joey Stone is currently the General Manager and Vice President of family owned and operated Teleco. Founded in 1983 as a full service telecommunications service provider, Teleco has partnered with Star2Star Communications to offer the latest in communications technology solutions and the latest Voice over IP technology. Joey and his team work with businesses of all sizes to customize systems for specific requirements from simple phone and voicemail systems to wireless networks and remote capabilities. To learn more about Teleco visit http://www.teleco-ilm.com. Joey is available for free demonstrations and consultations by calling (910) 791-7000.