The Challenge

It began with a lightning strike.

A week before the start of school in August of 2018, Our Lady of Lourdes Regional School had its entire phone system taken out with a bolt of lightning. The antiquated system, which was over 15 years old, was rendered completely unserviceable. Our Lady of Lourdes had no communication in or out. Their local vendor couldn’t do anything since there were no available parts for the equipment, so school officials did the only thing they could: they reached out to the Harrisburg Diocese for help. Meanwhile, parents were starting to call the school to get ready for the new school year.

Heritage Communications has done a considerable amount of work for the Diocese, and we were the first call they made. With school approaching rapidly and administrators and office staff using their cell phones to communicate with parents, vendors, and faculty, the Diocese asked us to see what we could do to help.

The Solution

Our first step was to assess the situation. We drove up to Coal Township to see how bad things really were, and they were exactly as described. Fortunately for them, they had invested in some upgrades to their computer network, which gave us the ability to provide a cloud-based hosted phone system solution.

We ordered the equipment that day, and the new phones arrived a couple of days later. Heritage CEO Chris Sloane went back on site to perform the installation, configure their system in the cloud, and train the staff on how to use the new equipment. Meanwhile, Heritage Systems Designer and Principal Justin Brian, programmed the system while on vacation.

The team got Our Lady of Lourdes up and running to the point where the office staff could at least take calls until the rest of the system was connected to the cloud. On the first day of school, we’re proud to say, all critical phone lines were fully operational.

The Result

The typical turnaround time for a project of this magnitude is approximately 15-30 days. We did it in a week. Not only do we have a dedicated team that’s committed to top-notch customer service, we also work with reputable vendors who were willing to lend a hand for a school in need and get things turned around quickly.

We’re pleased to say the customer was ecstatic. Because they had had such an antiquated phone system, they had no idea know great a cloud-based phone system could sound. They were amazed at the HD quality audio and the user-friendly and intuitive equipment. They’ve had no problems operating the phones or figuring out how to use them.

Our Lady of Lourdes is also a new customer for us. Even though they’re more than two hours away from our headquarters in Lancaster County, we can service their cloud-based phone system like we’re right next door.