Worthing Homes
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"Once we had received all the
initial tender responses it became clear that the call centre
option was going to cost approximately double what we were hoping
to pay. Britannic's solution has found a means of ticking all of
the boxes, but in an affordable manner." - Stephen Wallace, ICT
Manager, Worthing Homes
The Customer
Worthing Homes provide affordable rented homes, key worker
accommodation, low-cost shared ownership, sheltered housing and new
homes for local people. They have a customer base of over
10,000 in the Sussex coastal area and are a registered
charity. Having been formed in 1999, their relationship and
reputation with their customers is the lifeblood of their
business.
Requirements & Objectives
Worthing Homes had recently utilised the results of a 'mystery
shopper' to indicate their current customer satisfaction, however,
they realised that their ten year old system could not provide the
functionality nor the reporting they required. This prompted a
review of their existing infrastructure.
Worthing Homes sought independent advice. The recommendation
was that they should replace their existing system supplied by
Britannic and implement a contact centre solution. A major
requirement of the new system was to keep their mobile and
on-the-road agents contactable at all times and integrate them into
the main system.
They also needed a call recording function that would record all
incoming and outgoing calls. In order to gain a better
understanding of their call flows, there was a requirement for a
call logger. Worthing Homes had developed service standards
and these required all calls to be answered within a set
time.
The Solution
As an existing supplier Britannic understood the needs of the
organisation and recognised that while a contact centre solution
would provide the necessary
functionality, they were mindful of budget and looked for an
alternative solution that would be a more effective,
transparent system tailored to their needs.
The solution was centred on a feature-rich Mitel system with
Dynamic Extension and Mobile Twinning capabilities that would allow
their mobile and on-the-road agents to be fully contactable at all
times through their mobile handsets being twinned with their
personal extensions.
The Mitel solution was supplemented by a 15 channel voice
recorder that would record all calls coming in and going out over
the ISDN lines. The added benefit of this was that through
the Dynamic Extension feature all mobile calls would be routed
through the Mitel controller and therefore all mobile calls would
also be recorded, ensuring quality of service.
The final aspect of the Britannic solution outlined a Call Logger
that would allow calls for up to 100 users to be logged and
reported to the client's preference.
Implementation
A focus group was organised between Britannic and Worthing Home to
ensure Britannic had a full understanding from stakeholders across
the organisation as to what they wanted the solution to do and
allowed them to outline what was realistic and also discuss what
the further possibilities of the system were.
Trouble free installation
The system was programmed beforehand at Britannic's offices so
that the time dedicated to onsite programming was limited. A
conference call between all parties also took place the day before
installation to allow any questions to be answered and to ensure
that everyone was comfortable with the plan.
As the cutover was going to take place during working hours it was
important that downtime was kept to a minimum. This was
achieved by setting out the handsets the night before so that the
cutover from old to new would only take as long as it takes to swap
the cable. There was acceptance testing between the onsite
engineer and the client to ensure that they everything was in
working order before go live.
Comprehensive Training
An extensive training programme was undertaken to ensure that
every user was comfortable once the new phones were in use.
Britannic had two trainers on site floor walking
in case anyone had any handset issues and a refresher course was
run the following week to answer any questions gathered over the
first few days. An onsite administration training session was
also carried out to give the client the knowledge to make small
changes to their own system.
Proactive Monitoring
The entire infrastructure is maintained by Britannic and monitored
through a Briportal, Britannic's own secure VPN device that gives
real time remote access to the client's hardware and
applications.
Benefits
- Call recorder enables complete overview of incoming and
outgoing calls
- Agents can flag potential issues, line managers can review the
call from both sides
- Training and staff development plans simplified
- Calls and call flows can be reviewed
- Improves workload efficiency
- Improved staff scheduling and usage
- Unified Communicator Advanced enables continuity of address
books
- Agents can personalise their communications in-house
- Comprehensive functionality at a fraction of the cost
- Dynamic extension function ensures all calls are recorded and
archived, guaranteeing the agreed levels of customer care