“FluentStream is backed by a reputable venture capital firm, they have a great platform, and an impressive management team. We felt comfortable that our customers would be in good hands."

GPhone was co-founded in 1995 by Guy Jazynka and Stephen McCarthy who aimed to reduce phone bills for military personnel and their families. The company provided international phone services to U.S. military members and State department personnel based worldwide. In 2005, GPhone moved into the hosted PBX business expanding its customer portfolio to include U.S.-based businesses, primarily working with retirement homes, restaurants, and nonprofits nationwide.

Today, GPhone is a facilities-based carrier headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia. The company provides telecommunications services to thousands of customers in the U.S. and internationally, operating its own TDM and VoIP-based voice switches.

The company has earned numerous awards, including the Deloitte Fast 50, the Washington Technology Fast 50, and the Independent Agent Network Circle of Excellence Award.

Today, organizations need more than basic call functionality requiring features like auto attendant, on-demand call recording, and follow-me forwarding. Even more, customers expect 99.999% service reliability that can only be achieved with redundancy measures that require a significant cost investment.

In 2019, GPhone opted to avoid building out further infrastructure that could cause complex technical issues and researched alternative options. This search connected GPhone with FluentStream, a cloud-based unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) provider serving small and mid-size businesses throughout the U.S. and Canada.

GPhone was impressed by FluentStream’s expansive suite of features – of which there are over 100 – and its award-winning, US-based customer support; ultimately, deciding to pursue a strategic partnership with FluentStream.

As a strategic partner, GPhone transitioned its customer base to FluentStream’s UCaaS platform and customer support services.

“The migration of customers is a very big deal. In fact, it’s one of the biggest blocking points to companies being successful,” said Jazynka. “It requires a lot of coordination on the technical side and with customers to acknowledge the downtime necessary for a migration.”

As part of the strategic partnership, some of GPhone’s employees joined FluentStream as full-time employees and helped successfully transition GPhone customers to FluentStream’s platform. According to McCarthy, the shift to FluentStream was positive for his employees as FluentStream offered more growth opportunities.

“FluentStream transitioned as many as 20-30 customer sites a day and the process was seamless,” said Jazynka. “It required daily communication and multiple meetings a week with different groups.”

In addition to the strategic partnership, GPhone became an exclusive channel partner for FluentStream, enabling Jazynka and McCarthy to focus their efforts on sales of FluentStream services.

Today, FluentStream provides communications for hundreds of GPhone Customers.

We work directly with the GPhone team to identify both their current needs, and how they’d like to improve their communications in the future. Then our experts get to work building the custom business phone system of their dreams!

Jazynka added, “What makes FluentStream different is its people. We elected an exclusive partnership with FluentStream because it makes it easier for us to manage fewer people and only one partnership. FluentStream has strong employee retention, so we’ve been able to build lasting relationships with many of the employees. It feels like an extension of our own team.”