Based in Bristol, Blackstar Solutions is a trusted telecoms provider who delivers best-of-breed business communications solutions. Priding themselves on having long-established customer relationships, Blackstar has a 5-star Trustpilot rating. They work strategically with a wide range of technology partners whose expert knowledge helps them to meet their clients’ communication requirements.
Working with Gamma for almost three years, Blackstar chose to partner with Gamma as they were looking to align themselves with a partner that provides highly resilient voice and data services that are critical to their clients. Blackstar sells a number of Gamma’s voice services including Horizon, SIP and Inbound as well as broadband and Ethernet. SIP is their most successful Gamma product that they take to market.
As the channel market continues to crowd, many channel resellers are facing common challenges in their business. Blackstar have cited their challenges as being able to trust in a service provider, recruiting the right people to grow their business, the speed of response they get from their suppliers, complex implementation of solutions and overall support given to them as a partner. Simon Edwards, Head of Operations at Blackstar explains how working with Gamma overcomes these challenges:
“In our experience with Gamma, overheads are low and the solutions they provide are easy to deploy meaning minimal support is required. Where we have encountered issues, Gamma has been quick to resolve problems, thereby increasing our productivity and efficiency.”
Technical Alliance Partnership
As the first partner to join Gamma’s newly launched Technical Alliance Programme, Blackstar sees this as another benefit that Gamma provide to their partner base. The Technical Alliance Programme aims to recognise Gamma partners who are committed to keeping their teams updated and knowledgeable on the Gamma products they sell. Partners must prove they have a minimum number of provisioning and support staff who have completed all levels of relevant product courses on the Gamma Academy as well as having rated themselves through the Gamma Portal, and subscribed to all relevant Portal notifications.
In return, Technical Alliance Partners will receive annual marketing funding, an accreditation logo to use on their website and marketing collateral, full access to Gamma Accelerate premium features and support from the Gamma Marketing team. Dylan Pepler, Head of Marketing comments:
“The market place is crowded and we see this is an excellent opportunity to differentiate ourselves whilst demonstrating to our customer base that we have a highly skilled team and the technical knowledge to support their business. We feel the commitment you need to make to become a Technical Alliance partner is fair and it shows ourselves as a trusted Gamma partner.”
Looking into 2019
As Blackstar set their business goals for 2019 they are focussed on maintaining their 5-star rating on Trustpilot, providing their team with new skills as well as increasing the technical knowledge of the whole team, whilst steadily growing to ensure their customers continue to experience the highest levels of service at every touchpoint. Nick, CEO at Blackstar Solutions discusses how the fits to meet their business goals:
“Gamma provides us with a core network and solutions that we can rely on. We are provided with high-quality training modules through the Gamma Academy helping us to train our teams, whilst providing us with the highest levels of service and timely responses allowing us to focus on the customer.”
“The quality of service matched with the competitive pricing that Gamma provide is key to our business success. Providing excellent technical service to our clients is at the heart of what we do. Based on Gamma’s track record we know we could trust them to provide us with the highest levels of support.” Nick Smith, CEO at Blackstar Solutions
