How CCS Technology Replaced Voicemail Chaos with Something Surprisingly Simple

For most MSPs, voicemail isn’t broken enough to demand attention, but it’s broken enough to quietly drain time, accuracy, and visibility every single day.

That was exactly the position CCS Technology, headquartered in Indiana, found itself in.

Before adopting Thread Voice AI, voicemails at CCS followed a familiar but frustrating path. A call would come in after hours or when technicians were busy. The voicemail would land in their system as an audio attachment. Someone would download the file, listen to it, and then manually create or update a ticket based on what they heard.

It worked—until it didn’t.

“Everything relied on us remembering,” DJ Hanson, Director at CCS Technology explained. Remembering to download the file. Remembering to listen to the full message. Remembering to label the ticket correctly. Remembering to note that the issue came from voicemail at all.

Even tracking voicemail volume required technicians to manually type “VM” into ticket summaries. If someone forgot? That data was gone. There was no reliable way to answer a basic operational question: How many voicemails are we actually getting?

And like many MSPs, CCS didn’t set out to overhaul their phone system or experiment with cutting-edge AI. They just wanted voicemail to stop being such a mess.

Starting Simple On Purpose

When CCS began implementation of Voice AI, they focused on one thing: Overflow.

Overflow replaces traditional voicemail with an AI-powered answering experience that captures the caller’s issue, transcribes the entire message, and automatically creates a structured ticket.

DJ is quick to point out that their setup wasn’t complex or flashy.

“What we’re doing with Overflow is very basic and almost boring,” he said. “But it’s actually working—and it’s solving a real problem.”

That was intentional.

Instead of rolling out advanced routing or layered workflows, CCS treated overflow like a smarter voicemail. Calls still came in the same way. Customers still left messages. But what happened next changed completely.

From Audio Files to Actual Intelligence

With overflow in place, voicemails stopped arriving as MP3 files buried in tickets. Instead, every call automatically generated a ticket with the full transcription included.

No downloads. No listening at double speed. No guessing what a caller said or replaying a clipped message that cut off mid-sentence.

For technicians, the difference was immediate.

In the past, CCS sometimes received voicemails that were partially cut off by their phone system. Now, technicians could hear—or read—the entire call. Every detail was captured and preserved inside the ticket.

And for the first time, CCS had visibility.

“Now that we can see all of our voicemails coming in, we can get numbers on them,” DJ shared. “We can actually know what’s happening.”

That visibility turned voicemail from a black hole into something measurable, trackable, and improvable.

The Hidden Value of Transcription

One of the biggest surprises for the CCS team was transcription.

While transcription might sound like a small feature on paper, in practice it became a quiet force multiplier. Every call lived inside the ticket as text—searchable, reviewable, and consistent.

Even though CCS hadn’t yet fully moved their team into Thread Inbox at the time of the conversation, technicians were already feeling the impact. They could review the entire interaction without relying on memory or interpretation.

It wasn’t just faster, it was clearer.

And clarity matters when tickets drive downstream work.

“What About Customers Talking to AI?”

Like many MSPs, CCS initially encountered a common concern: would customers be confused or uncomfortable talking to AI?

Early on, some callers assumed they were stuck in an IVR menu and asked for escalation or a technician. That feedback mattered.

Instead of abandoning the approach, CCS tuned it.

Alex, who led much of the setup, focused on the greeting prompt—making it clear, human, and transparent. The message simply explained that technicians weren’t available, but the system would collect the information and create a ticket.

“I probably listened to the voice a thousand times,” Alex joked, adjusting wording and pacing until it felt right.

Those small changes made all the difference.

Once expectations were set clearly, voicemails came in cleanly. Contact mapping improved. In some cases, the system even recognized callers by phone number and greeted them by name—instantly providing context inside the ticket.

And importantly, the experience felt familiar to customers. This wasn’t a chatbot trying to troubleshoot. It was voicemail—done better.

Testing Without Risk

Before going live, CCS didn’t run elaborate test plans. They did something far more practical.

They called themselves.

Using personal cell phones, they dialed their main number, jumped straight to voicemail, and interacted with Overflow repeatedly. They listened. Adjusted. Tried again.

That low-risk, real-world testing approach gave them confidence before rolling it out broadly, and ensured there were no surprises when customers encountered it.

Boring, in the Best Way Possible

A month in, CCS wasn’t talking about AI hype or futuristic automation.

They were talking about fewer downloads. Cleaner tickets. Reliable data. Happier technicians.

“My downloads folder is very happy now,” Alex said.

And that’s the point.

Overflow didn’t change how CCS Technology delivers service, and it didn’t force technicians to learn a new process or customers to adapt to something unfamiliar.It simply removed friction from a workflow that had always been there, and made it quietly, consistently better.

Sometimes the best use of AI isn’t doing something new. It’s finally fixing something old.