Having a disaster recovery plan is important in any business, and Brotherhood Mutual, one of the leading insurers for Christian ministries such as churches and schools, recognizes the value of these plans for both its policyholders and the organization itself. 

In our latest case study, Christopher Harvey, Brotherhood Mutual’s Chief Information Security Officer and Assistant Vice President of Network Architecture, and Judd Johnson, Zoom Project Lead at Brotherhood Mutual, described how the organization has leveraged Zoom, and specifically Zoom Phone, to build a more resilient communications infrastructure and offer its employees a more flexible and efficient communications experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It could stand up during a disaster 

“We were using an on-premises solution with Cisco Call Manager, but we wanted to move to a cloud-based PBX phone system,” Harvey said. “Our phone system was analog-based. If a disaster struck, we’d be able to recover our digital environment within an hour or two, but our phone system wouldn’t recover nearly as quickly.”

The ability to pivot during COVID-19

“We were really disappointed with the other [phone] solutions we evaluated, but one day Ryan Tufo, our Technical Support Team Lead, came to me and said, ‘Everything we do with Zoom is awesome. Their software is intuitive and working with their team is amazing. They also have a phone product,’” Harvey added. “So we started piloting Zoom Phone in January, which ended up being a fortunate confluence of events because we started working from home shortly after due to COVID-19. Our executives asked us, ‘What are we going to do about our phone system?’ We were able to get everyone in the company a Zoom Phone number in a week.” 

Mobile flexibility

“Most of our workforce is using Zoom Phone within the Zoom desktop client,” Johnson said. “We also love having Zoom Phone on our personal phones because we can be so much more mobile. I can use it in any environment, whether I’m in the office, at home or driving down the road. Zoom is extremely flexible to the point that our imagination is probably the only thing limiting our use of it.” 

Voicemail transcription

“I get a lot of phone calls, and when I was busy I would just let calls go straight to voicemail and listen to them one-by-one later on,” Harvey said. “With Zoom Phone, I let those calls go to my voicemail and the system sends me the transcript of the voicemail to my email, which allows me to read and prioritize them or just delete them.” 

Simple administration 

“The administration of the Zoom system has been the biggest surprise. From user setups to the creation and management of call queues and auto-attendants, the process is easy and straightforward. The options and power behind the system has met our every need. We can make changes on the fly assisting our teams with immediate solutions,” Johnson said.

To learn more about how Brotherhood Mutual is using Zoom to communicate more effectively and create a healthy work-life balance for its employees, check out the case study.