ESI – A Love Story

We spend most of our time in this blog giving general technology advice. Today we’d take some time to introduce you to our telephony manufacturer-partner, ESI. ESI, (Estech Systems Inc.) is a 30 year old telephony company based out of Plano, Texas.

RCI was first introduced to ESI in 2017. For over 30 years RCI had been a Toshiba telecommunications dealer. It was a good relationship that ended suddenly with a mass Dear John letter that Toshiba sent out to it’s dealers. Toshiba was closing down it’s telecommunications division in a matter of months. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Toshiba is focusing on other ventures.

This led to a major problem. For three decades RCI had exclusively sold Toshiba telephone systems. Toshiba had a good business model and a good product. And as a technology company that had begun in telecommunications and still used it for a large portion of our business, RCI had an issue.

Founder of the company, President and CEO John Whitcomb had a big decision to make and not a lot of time to make it. We needed a new manufacturer-partner and while it was a decision that needed to be made quickly, it was not a decision that could be rushed.

We certainly weren’t suffering for a lack of choices.We had a lot of suitors. When Toshiba sent out it’s break up letter, it’s dealers were not the only ones who heard about it. The other telecom companies knew there were a lot of newly widowed dealers out there and they wanted to scoop as many as they could.

The problem was, we were spoiled. We weren’t going to settle for just anyone. Toshiba’s product was rock solid and their phones did everything any one could have wanted. We wanted an exclusive relationship. We wanted a quality product. We wanted features. Not just anyone would do.

When RCI Met ESI

It wasn’t long before ESI came in.

After meeting with ESI, RCI was impressed. They were the only other manufacturer out there with quality phone systems in all 3 categories, digital, VOIP and Cloud. ESI phone systems are modular and backwards compatible. That means that customers can add to their systems as they need to. In addition to a solid product, ESI’s phones have features you can’t get anywhere else.

The features are all useful and easy to use – like a help button. In fact ESI prides itself on having the most user-friendly phones on the market. You can change your outgoing message by pressing two buttons – message and record. Do you even know how to change your outgoing voicemail message?

Perhaps most importantly, ESI is a true manufacturer of quality products. What do I mean by true manufacturer? They make their own proprietary products rather than trying to shoehorn generic phones into their systems. It’s a better way of doing business that leads to a better customer experience.

We were sold. Since then our relationship with ESI has only gotten better.

Our customers rave about the ease of use of the telephones and the money we save them on their monthly phone bills.

More to Come

Last week, we got a preview of ESI’s newest telephone system – the E-SIP. One thing we’ve learned after working with ESI for a while now it that they are very open to feedback. The newest system has improved upon everything and kept everything we love about their systems.

The E-SIP is completely self-contained. It does everything you need out of the box. It has all the ease of use we’ve come to love and that ESI is known for. But it also has call recording without any additional cost. It requires no licenses. As a result, it is the most affordable phone system we have ever offered. Plus, it uses the same telephones as our cloud system so customers can move from one to the other if the need arises.

We will have more information about the E-SIP as time goes on but in the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about the E-SIP or any of the products RCI offers, give use a call or leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!