"I am extremely impressed with the abilities and quick response of ConnectSouth's people. The customer service representatives and the technical support team members are available within minutes and always give me their direct numbers. I know that I can reach someone at any time, and usually the same person. In this day of a faceless and automated service, good customer service means a lot."

Baseline Consultants, Inc. is a project management firm that specializes in providing project scheduling and control services to the building industry. Founded in 1996, Baseline has been instrumental in developing industry-leading standards used to monitor and document the design and construction process. The company helps owners, contractors and designers throughout the United States use this information to forecast trends and manage labor resources. The system Baseline uses has been found to be the most effective way to keep construction project teams informed throughout the project duration and reduces the chances of team members being misinformed or uninformed.

Baseline's lifeblood is information management. Information flow varies, but everyday somewhere from two to 12 progress reports, containing new data and updated project news, must be sent to project teams across the nation. These reports are compiled by distribution groups at Baseline that number two to 25 people in each group, and the reports are .5 to 3.0 Mb formatted in Adobe Acrobat. While the speed of transmission has never been an issue for Baseline, the company had a serious problem obtaining Internet connections. With only one modem and later only one ADSL line serving an entire office, the line was often tied up and people would need to call around the office to see when it was available. Worse still, the service was not reliable in that the ADSL was often down.

In choosing a company with a big name that everybody knows, Baseline figured the service would be dependable. But after three and a half months, the ADSL connection was down seven full working days (including many other days when the service was down anywhere from 15 minutes to three or four hours). This was having a negative impact on business. The company estimates it spent a total of 20-25 hours on the phone trying to reach technical support, only to discover that the person who would eventually answer the phone could not solve the problem and, at best, could only schedule a service visit for one week later.

ConnectSouth installed a SDSL line that gives every staff member at Baseline Consultants instant Internet access from their desktop. There are no more shared lines or worries about the Internet connection going down. Speed is equally reliable. Just as important to Baseline, the company has received extremely responsive service from ConnectSouth. Customer Service responds within five to 10 minutes of a call and Baseline has not had a single incident where the person taking the call did not know what they were doing.

The SDSL line was installed as scheduled and Baseline has not experienced a single downtime incident. Baseline is so pleased with ConnectSouth's products and services that ConnectSouth is now hosting Baseline's e-mail service and Web site. From sales calls to installation and follow-up care, ConnectSouth has been reliable and responsive -- everything promised and more.