Customer Story
Big Dog Solar | Residential solar · Oracle NetSuite
From disconnected communications to one customer story in NetSuite.
Big Dog Solar replaced desk phones and three separate communication platforms with a single Contivio environment, connected to the NetSuite records its teams already work in.
Company snapshot
A NetSuite-run business that needed its communications to match.
Big Dog Solar already ran its customer, contact and project work in NetSuite. Voice, text and chat were the part of the operation still living somewhere else.
- Industry
- Residential solarSales, install and post-install service
- ERP / CRM
- Oracle NetSuiteCustomer, contact and project records
- Deployment
- Contact center + PBXTwo locations plus remote users
- Channels at go-live
- Voice and SMS/MMSOutbound campaigns and inbound replies
- Environment
- Softphone-basedMoved away from physical desk phones
- Administration
- Better admin visibilityCalls, queues, users, recordings and logs
The challenge
Three platforms, physical phones, and no single customer view.
Big Dog Solar had no complaint about its former provider. The problem was the shape of the system: it had been built for an office of desk phones, and the business no longer worked that way.
Employees depended on physical handsets. When something went wrong, IT often had to work with the phone or the workstation in person to diagnose it.
Phone, text and chat each lived on a different platform, and none of them lived where the business did. Calls, customer information and notes sat apart from the NetSuite records that carried the project.
As Amanda Amato, Business Systems Manager and NetSuite Administrator, put it: “Talk about a disconnected customer story.”
- Employees tied to physical desk phones
- Troubleshooting that required hands on the hardware
- Phone, text and chat on three separate platforms
- Communications disconnected from NetSuite
- Manual work to piece together customer history
The solution
One environment, built around the system of record.
Contivio replaced the hardware-bound setup with a cloud contact center and telephony environment across two locations and remote users.
Modern telephony
Softphone instead of hardware
- Voice and SMS/MMS from one environment
- Queue routing and management
- Queue callback and voicemail
- Call recordings
- Reporting and visibility for supervisors
Connected to NetSuite
The conversation joins the workflow
- Screen pop of the matching customer record
- NetSuite search when several records match
- Click-to-Dial from NetSuite
- Automatic call logging
- AI transcripts and summaries on the NetSuite record
Automation
Automated customer follow-up
- Outbound SMS campaigns from saved searches and workflows
- Appointment and milestone follow-up
- Inbound replies routed into SMS queues
- Fewer repetitive manual messages
NetSuite holds the business context. Contivio brings the customer conversation into it.
Inside NetSuite
Communications that land on the customer, contact or project.
Big Dog Solar was not looking for a phone system that could export data into NetSuite. It wanted the conversation to happen inside the workflow its teams already followed.
Inbound calls screen-pop the matching NetSuite record, with a NetSuite search presented when more than one record matches. Employees Click-to-Dial from the record, and calls log automatically against it. Link-to-Call handles the cases where an interaction belongs to a different record than the one that popped.
Recordings, transcripts, AI-generated summaries, notes and dispositions are associated with the NetSuite record as well, across customer, contact and project records, the same objects the rest of the business is managed in.
- Screen pop on the matching customer record
- NetSuite search on multiple matches
- Click-to-Dial from NetSuite
- Automatic call logging
- Link-to-Call for related records
- Recordings, transcripts, AI summaries, notes and dispositions on the record
- Customer, Contact and Project record support
Day to day
From working on the phone to seeing the whole picture.
The change Amanda felt first was administrative. Supporting the teams no longer starts with walking to a desk.
What administrators can now see
- Call activity as it happens
- User availability and status
- Queue behavior
- Call recordings
- Customer SMS and MMS conversations
- Logs and configuration
- Individual calls when an issue is reported
Where a problem once meant handling a physical phone, it now means opening the record of the call in question. Configuration, status and history are all visible from the same place.
In Amanda’s words: “That visibility alone has made supporting our teams much easier.”
Implementation & support
The part Amanda did not expect.
Amanda has been through multiple company-wide phone system migrations at other companies, which makes her assessment of this one worth quoting directly.
This was by far the smoothest implementation experience I’ve had, and that is saying a lot. Their support team is hands down one of the best vendor support teams I have worked with.
Amanda Amato · Business Systems Manager / NetSuite Administrator, Big Dog Solar
Big Dog SolarResidential solar · Oracle NetSuite
Problems worked, not deflected
The support team works through an issue rather than pointing to documentation — and supplies the documentation when Big Dog Solar wants to handle something itself next time.
Access that continued after go-live
Direct support access did not end at launch. Individual calls and logs get reviewed to separate network, headset, configuration and application causes.
A concrete example
For the Welcome Call process, Big Dog Solar needed standardized audio played during a live call with the agent still on the line. Contivio worked with them on audio injection to find a way to do it.
The results
What changed day to day.
Communications inside NetSuite
Calls, recordings, transcripts, AI summaries, notes and dispositions attach to the customer, contact or project record the work already lives on.
Away from physical desk phones
A softphone environment removed the hardware step from both daily work and troubleshooting.
Visibility for administrators
Calls, queues, user status, recordings and logs are visible from one place, which made supporting the teams easier.
More ways to reach customers
SMS and MMS sit alongside voice instead of on a separate platform.
Automated follow-up
Appointment and milestone messages go out from NetSuite saved searches and workflows, with replies routed back to a queue.
A working partnership
Implementation and ongoing support that Amanda describes as collaborative rather than transactional.
Get started
Bring your customer conversations into NetSuite.
See how Contivio connects voice and SMS to the NetSuite records your teams already work in — with screen pops, Click-to-Dial, automatic call logging, recordings, AI transcripts and summaries, and automated follow-up.
