Cosmetic Company PDF Print E-mail

This growing beauty company is based in the north of England and sells its products to other businesses based both in the UK and internationally. The MD had been looking to upgrade their telephony solution for some time but had been quoted in excess of £25,000 by an existing telephony provider for a solution to fit the needs of their diverse and expanding business.

 

 

Customer Requirements

 

The customer's requirements included the following:

  • 30 employees at present with plans to expand within the next twelve months.

  • The MD wanted to work from home for up to two days a week, and to be contactable on weekends if necessary.

  • There was a need to identify their business-to-business sales calls from support and accounts calls, and route them to appropriate staff.

  • High call volumes to their ten sales staff indicated a need for sophisticated call queuing

  • Management wanted to monitor numbers of incoming and outgoing calls, by individual extension and by time of day, as there was a requirement to pay sales staff by results

  • The existing investment in four ISDN lines (on long contracts) needed to be realised

  • To supplement PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) connectivity the company wanted a choice of routing international calls using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) in order to reduce costs.

  • Because communication was vital to daily business a back-up strategy was important to cater for possible phone line faults


Perihelion Telecom Solution

 

Perihelion Telecom installed the Perihelion Voice Server configured for 30 extensions but with the capability to expand to meet future growth without the need for any new hardware. The benefits included:

  • Roaming user facility activated for senior staff allowing them to work from home as if they were in the office.

  • Incoming lines were answered by an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) option allowing calls to be routed automatically to the appropriate department.

  • Fully featured call queuing was implemented, letting customers know how long they would have to wait for an assistant and allowing the ten sales staff to handle large volumes of calls efficiently.

  • A Call Centre Statistics Module provides comprehensive data on all call activity within the company. This integrates with their Customer Relationship Management software and Microsoft Outlook for ease of use.

  • The company’s investment in its four ISDN lines was protected as they were fully utilized by the Voice Server

  • Automated least cost routing was implemented for selected dialling codes (e.g.

    premium rate, mobile and international)

  • A VoIP (Voice over IP) gateway was put in place for peak periods to avoid customers and staff experiencing poor service due to busy lines

  • Full backup and resilience was made available as part of Perihelion’s standard service with the option to use Perihelion Telecom’s backup Central Voice Server and an alternate failover broadband route.


Benefits of Solution

 

  • Because the system is software based, expansion in staff numbers is easy to implement without the need for new PBX hardware.

  • The Roaming User facility allows senior management to call clients from home, or be called, without exposing home landline numbers or using mobile phones. This innovative and professional solution to home working has the added benefit that all calls are billed to the company account and can be monitored with the Call Centre statistics. Calls back to the office are free, call transfers to a manager at a remote locations can be made without incurring any costs and the PA or receptionist can see if he’s already engaged on a call before making the transfer by simply noting the Busy Lamp Field (BLF) on her phone handset (no need to use valuable PC screen real estate).

  • IVR for automated call routing allows the receptionist more time to meet and greet onsite customers.

  • A comprehensive Call Centre Statistics Module (CCSM), including analyses by time of day, day of week etc, has allowed the MD to analyse the pattern of calls coming in. With the information from these statistics the working hours for sales staff were changed from 8:30am-5:30pm to 9:00am-6:00pm to meet the high level of calls experienced shortly after the original closing time – when many of their business clients were free to place orders – and rationalize the number of staff working from 8:30-9:00am. To increase efficiency and reduce unproductive time (including personal calls), Key Performance Indicators, based on information gathered by the CCSM, have been implemented for sales staff, enabling them to be incentivised with payment by results.

  • The new queuing system has reduced customer waiting times by two minutes per call, significantly improving customer satisfaction levels.

  • The VoIP gateway allows for multiple incoming numbers to be assigned per marketing campaign. Statistics from the system allow the efficiency (cost per call received by channel) of different advertising channels, such as a local directory or newspaper advert, to be quickly derived.