Jean-Pierre Gaertner, Technical Director at Athena Global Services Telecom (AGST), leads the promotion of Bicom Systems solutions in France. With over seven years in VoIP, he previously served as Support Manager at Wildix France. Since joining AGST in 2023, Jean-Pierre has driven innovation, hosted promotional events, and supported sales with his technical expertise.
Jean-Pierre Gaernter
Technical Director, AGST
Stop letting Wildix make you the product and make their money on your back; come to Bicom Systems to sell the product yourself and take ownership of Your Business, Your Brand, Your Way.
Jean-Pierre Gaertner began working for Wildix in 2018. His industry background (dating back to before the birth of VoIP) and personal integrity helped him become very good at his job as a Wildix Support Technician.
“Within the first two to three days, I was closing more tickets than the rest of the team,” Jean-Pierre recalls with a laugh.
But even more important than his impressive efficiency were the relationships he began cultivating with Wildix clients. “People need to be reassured. You have to really talk to them, get to know them,” says Jean-Pierre. Clients appreciated him for the personal connection that was created.
Just one year after starting with Wildix, Jean-Pierre became Head of Support, just in time for the Covid-19 Pandemic to hit. With all of the additional support needs caused by the global pandemic, Wildix hired more staff and Jean-Pierre became not only the leader of the growing support team, but also Head of Administration for Wildix France.
Jean-Pierre says he was “mostly happy at Wildix” and expected to stay with the company until retirement. But at some point, things began to change.
While Wildix products continually improved on a technical level, there were bureaucratic and financial issues that made supporting clients increasingly difficult. Jean-Pierre identifies six “blockages and problems that we were facing every single day trying to move the solution forward.”
Lack of Resources for Support
Documentation and support experience were not widely shared across offices and languages at Wildix. Problems that may have already been solved in Germany, for example, were trapped in a data silo and didn’t reach support technicians facing the same problems in France.
Similarly, new product versions were rolled out country-by-country, starting with Wildix France and turning them into a guinea pig of sorts to work out all of the kinks and bugs before the product hit other markets. This made it more difficult and time-consuming for support to close tickets.
Contrarily, the support team at Bicom Systems is a united front that has access to all of the same databases and materials, plus open communication through our internal use of gloCOM.
Integrations
Another area of contention was integrations with the PBX product. While the integration options were there, they often did not work as expected.
For example, the Microsoft Teams integration had some major issues that brought customers to support constantly. “It was a bit of a strain having to push and push all the time,” recalls Jean-Pierre.
Another issue that arose for the support team was the use of beta solutions. Wildix began pushing beta and even developer solutions to clients, essentially utilizing their customers as testers. When facing pushback from clients, Wildix would revert to a stable solution, but ultimately release the beta without proper testing a few months later. For support, this meant encountering the same bugs and problems over and over despite resolving them.
Jean-Pierre remembers joking with his colleagues that at Wildix “You would have a problem, you’d solve the problem in three months, and six months later the problem would be back.”
At Bicom Systems beta testing is done on a voluntary basis through our Partners Program, with close communication and collaboration throughout the process. In light of increasing issues, Jean-Pierre’s focus on relationships continued to stand at the forefront of his success. “We had a great team and it was working fantastically because, in my opinion, the most important part of IT support is the client on the receiving side.”
Jean-Pierre set very high standards for his team to ensure positive relationships with their clients. For example, any new support ticket prompted a call to the client to connect with them personally before work began.
No Access to Developers
When Jean-Pierre first began with Wildix in 2018, he remembers having access to developers and being able to ask questions. But as soon as the number of support tickets began to grow, “that link was cut off.”
Open tickets could go weeks without moving. Developers set a maximum number of tickets they could handle per week. “If I needed an integration, it could take a year or two before the thing got seen to.”
In contrast, Jean-Pierre finds his access to Bicom developers “fantastic” and when we spoke to him about this case study, he said he had actually spoken with a developer that very morning. He appreciates the “direct access to someone who knows what he’s talking about and what’s going on behind the product.” At Bicom Systems, Jean-Pierre can open a ticket and get an answer “within a day or two.”
“We get feedback that we didn’t get at Wildix which is really awesome.”
“In the beginning, anyone could have a PBX on Wildix,” says Jean-Pierre, “but then when things started growing you needed at least four licenses to get a PBX.”
There was no true multi-tenant solution, it had to be put together using a makeshift solution that required at least 10 users – more licenses to buy. And even then, it didn’t function as a true multi-tenant.
A major piece of the Bicom Platform is PBXware Multi-Tenant which utilizes multi-tenant architecture to manage multiple users from a single installation.
Jean-Pierre recalls that “support became a grievances phone line. We heard grievances all day long.” As a testament to his dedication and integrity, the words they heard repeated again and again: “If it wasn’t for you guys in support, we would have left ages ago.”
Wildix customers are required to meet certain targets and quotas to maintain their status, and these are becoming more aggressive each year. In 2018, Wildix had about 15 expert partners, but just two years later the strict requirements had pushed that number down to 1. Today there are none left in France.
When Jean-Pierre was with Wildix, partners were required to attend the annual summit and were given one hour to sign their blanket agreement on the first day. Today the allotted time has been relaxed to one week.
The pressure forces clients to focus on numbers and meeting quotas above all else. As you will learn below, Bicom Systems forces no such quotas or demands on our partners. Our focus is on supporting and serving our partners as they pursue their own journeys to growth.
The biggest change for Jean-Pierre came when Wildix management asked him to try out something new on behalf of the whole team. They wanted to move all employees to a portage company, so they would continue working for Wildix without being official employees.
Aware of the red flags flying, Jean-Pierre began the process but no longer felt confident in his future at Wildix. “Things were changing,” Jean-Pierre said with a dry laugh and his gut was telling him “this smells bad.”
At this point, Cédric Cazenabe, CEO of Athena Global Service Telecom (AGST), official distributor for Bicom Systems in France, approached Jean-Pierre. Cédric and Jean-Pierre knew each other through IT Partners and had mutual respect and business goals. So when Cédric asked Jean-Pierre to bring his experience and connections to the AGST team, Jean-Pierre knew this was his chance for stability.
“I was pretty confident. I like challenges,” says Jean-Pierre. He made the decision to move to AGST “not for money, but for the chance to move out of Wildix.”
Today, most of the guys that Jean-Pierre knows are no longer with Wildix and Wildix France has been completely dismantled. Many Wildix clients are still in contact with Jean-Pierre and some have already followed him. Many are locked in to Wildix solutions but Jean-Pierre is working on ways to help them break free and transition to AGST and Bicom Systems.
“The number one thing people are looking for is stability,” explains Jean-Pierre. “They want to get away from the big brands like 3CX, Wildix, Alcatel, Yeastar… Clients get into these models where it’s all lovely, but then they start realizing prices are going up, things are changing, what they said yesterday is no longer true today.”
As resellers, these companies need a stable solution that they can offer to their own customers, otherwise when changes happen they become the ‘bad guy’ and ultimately lose business.
The number one question that Jean-Pierre hears when Wildix clients call him and ask about Bicom Systems is: “What’s going to happen economically?” That question is soon followed by: “Are you stable? Are you going to keep your prices? Are things going to change?” It’s easy for Jean-Pierre to answer: “No, that’s not going to happen. Bicom Systems has been stable since 2004.”
Bicom Systems has a transparent history dating back to 2004 and all of our original founders and stakeholders remain with the company today. We have financial stability and a roadmap based on ongoing partner feedback to future-proof their businesses.
“At Bicom Systems, We value our partners,” Jean-Pierre tells his contacts. “Anyone can become a reseller at Bicom Systems at the same price. It’s so simple. We don’t push you to make numbers, we help you make numbers. We are here to help you, not sell to you.”
Another advantage afforded by Bicom Systems is the option for White Label. At Wildix, not only is white label non-existent, users must even use Wildix phones exclusively.
White label options give resellers the ability to build up their own brand and drive loyalty in their customers. Jean-Pierre considers the biggest difference at Bicom Systems the ‘human side’. “We are here as a service to people, not to sell a product.”
Asked if he could provide one piece of advice to Wildix customers, Jean-Pierre says: “Stop letting Wildix make you the product and make their money on your back; come to Bicom Systems to sell the product yourself and take ownership of Your Business, Your Brand, Your Way.”
He would like to encourage anyone still at Wildix, or any other big company that focuses more on numbers than relationships, to take back the reins on their business and move to a provider that will give them the stability and support they need to grow their business into the future.