Professional services

Estate agents

CHALLENGES

• Answering the phone within a few rings is vital to an estate agent’s success. The customer might be phoning to view, make an offer on or sell a property.
• In a highly competitive market, it’s easy for the customer to deal with another estate if their call is not answered, particularly if the property is subject to a multi-agency contract.
• Many estate agents are multi-site companies with a mixed estate of PBX, meaning higher costs and more complex to manage.

SOLUTION

• VoIPer provides a single, streamlined communications solution covering all estate agent offices and mobile/home office staff.
• The self-service Business Portal makes it easy for the estate agent to modify call treatments such as Music-on-Hold or Marketing Messages-on-Hold to reflect current business activity.
• Graphical Call Detail Records can be viewed to track and manage the level of inbound/outbound call activity, helping to measure and improve performance targets.
• Group Call Handling works company-wide ensuring customer call activity, helping to measure and improve performance targets.
• Group Call Handling works company-wide ensuring customer calls are answered within a few rings by the most appropriate person, not matter where they are located.
• Using the UC Office mobile App, agents remain in close contact wherever they are with easy tracking of colleagues’ availability status. Calls are recorded for staff training use.
• CRM integration enables access to caller’s records on the PC at the same time as the call is answered and enables us to record notes for follow-up.

BENEFITS

Expand geographic reach

• Estate agents can publish multiple local numbers to provide a local identity and answer the call appropriate for that local area, no matter where they are.
• With VoIPer it’s quick and easy to set up or move offices to new locations and take the company number with you.

Improve customer service

• Calls are answered by a free staff member, wherever they are located, ensuring business is not lost.

Lower Costs

• Internal calls are free, even to mobiles using the UC Office App, so there is no need for an on-premises telephone system
• App supports Bring Your Own Device so agents can use their own device and separate business calls from personal ones.

Legal services

CHALLENGES

• Law firms are being forced to keep their costs down as clients want to reduce their legal bills.

SOLUTION

BENEFITS

Retail sector

CHALLENGES

• Competition from online and high street stores lead to intense pressure to reduce and manage costs.
• Retailers must provide a consistently high experience across all channels – multiple stores, online and call centres.
• Employees struggle answering calls while simultaneously assisting in-store customers.
• Difficulty separating out calls about store hours and products. Old PBX systems make it hard to screen out calls from competitors collecting current pricing information.
• A need for real-time communications across multiple sites.
• Disparate PBX estates cost more to maintain and result in an inconsistent image.

SOLUTION

• VoIPer’s Auto Attendant routes incoming calls to the correct staff or to information about operating hours, reducing caller wait times.
• Calls can be routed to staff based on their expertise so they can help customers in store.
• For multi-store retailers, VoIPer enables calls to be answered within a few rings by staff anywhere, on any device.
• Call Detail Records let retailers review after-hours calls.
• The Push-to-Talk feature enables staff to communicate instantly between extensions.
• Using Wi-Fi, the UC Office App lets staff use their own device and benefit from free internal calls, plus at-a-glance presence availability status of colleagues.
• In-store Wi-Fi can also be used by customers to research their desired products.
• On-site cordless solutions can help in communications.

BENEFITS

Improved customer service

• A phone system that reflects commitment to providing the best customer experience.
• HD voice is crystal clear so cuts out mistakes based on lack of hearing the customer and calls are answered within a couple of rings.

Increased productivity

• Group Call Handling and Unified Communications Apps on mobile devices, tablets and desktops help speed the flow of communications across a retail organisation.
• Extending Cloud UC services to other organisations in a retailer’s supply chain speeds the communications flow across the entire value chain.

Consistent service experience

• VoIPer enables a consistent image and service experience across all stores, e.g. retailers can provide the same on hold message to customers.

Rapid deployment means business as usual

• Setting up the service and plugging the desk phones into a data network is quick and easy, ensuing the retailer can get on with serving customers.

Reduce costs

• Consolidating the “voice estate” to a single provider has proven cost advantages.
• Free calls between all staff and companies lowers the monthly telephone bill.

Manufacturing

CHALLENGES

• Traditional phone systems (PBX) are increasingly unreliable and harder to maintain.
• Finding budget for the upfront costs associated with on-premises phone systems.
• Traditional PBX lacks the flexible-working solutions now demanded by employers
• Traditional PBX lacks analytical tools, such as the ability to show the number of abandoned and missed calls at different times of day.

SOLUTION

• Investing in fibre network connectivity to run the data systems required between all locations. VoIPer runs across the same fibre internet connections.
• The only new equipment required are pre-configured IP desk phones.
• The UC Office App provides a “desk phone in their pocket” for staff.
• VoIPer integrated Call Centre provides customer call treatments, such as skills-based routing which puts the caller through to the right Customer Service Rep.
• The Customer Services Manager can analyse and manage customer service anytime of day or night using the self-service Business Portal, with daily reports delivered by email.

BENEFITS

Analytics to measure and improve customer service

• VoIPer provides real-time reports and daily reports.
• This provides the ability to measure what’s happening in customer services and enables better management.

Manage your business calls, from wherever you are

• Flexibility to work anywhere using one number with the company calling plan.
• Users can make free internal calls using the UC Office App.
• The sales team are now in closer contact with customers and employees.

Long-term flexibility to meet your changing needs

• Admin can use the Business Portal to configure new users in a matter of minutes, compared to the time-consuming method of previously adding and moving extensions.
• Staff can take IP phones home if they need to work from home or use the Remote Office functionality or UC Office App on their laptop, tablet or mobile device.
• Software upgrades are made in the Hosted and automatically delivered to the customer.

Save on set-up and maintenance costs, as well as call costs

• The cost of implementing a VoIPer solution delivered a <1 year Return on Investment (ROI) compared to maintaining and upgrading the current PBX and ISDN charges.

Highly reliable phone system

• VoIPer is a telco-grade business communications service delivered from the Service Provider data centre.
• The maintenance and upgrades are taken care of by the Service Providers so you can get on with running operations

Schools

CHALLENGES

• Reduced funding, coupled with old phone systems (PBX) is hard and expensive to maintain. They often use legacy ISDN lines with high call rental and call charges.
• Connecting parents to teachers – many schools use old answering machines and notify teachers to call a parent back via post-it notes.
• No method to contact teachers in case of emergency.
• With increased use of internet in teaching, it makes sense to use the same broadband for the school’s communications service.

SOLUTION

• VoIPer provides a flexible and cost-effective communications solution.
• The school can save money by installing low-cost telephones in each classroom and by removing legacy lines.
• The UC Office App on a teacher’s tablet or mobile device means they can be contacted at any time. By using Call Director, teachers can call parents back with the school’s number presented, not their own – important for teacher confidentiality.
• UC Office desktop sharing enables teachers to experiment with remote online learning techniques before implementing a formal remote learning solution.
• Auto Attendant keeps parents updated on latest news and is easy for staff to record announcements, e.g. cancellations.
• A move from ISDN to broadband means no limit on concurrent calls into the school, so they never miss a call.

BENEFITS

Parent-school interaction

• Parents can get the latest news from the Auto Attendant and never hear the busy tone so they always get through to someone.
• Parents can contact the appropriate department or teacher more easily.
• Parents receive notifications of events, e.g. school closed due to bad weather.

Cost savings

• With minimal upfront capital expenditure for the school they can meet stricter government budget targets and free up capital for spending on learning resources.
• Removal of ISDN, maintenance and PBX depreciation costs.
• Easy to scale up or down to support temporary staffing needs.

Enhance student experience

• More diverse learning experiences, e.g. online, video.
• Student-teacher interactions are more interactive with 1-to-1 and 1-to-many learning options.

Nursing and care homes 

CHALLENGES

• The on-site mobile, nursing staff and facilities support team need to be more reachable in order to provide faster response to patients and guests.
• A more efficient way of dealing with appointment requests and inbound queries is needed.
• Budgets are always under pressure so it’s important to cut costs. Predicable costs from cloud solutions will help.

SOLUTION

• VoIPer delivers a cloud solution that meets the nursing care home’s communications needs. The care home Manager can easily manage the service in the office ore remotely through the intuitive self-service Business Portal.
• Phones simply plug into the data network socket and Clients and Apps run on desktops, tablets and mobile devices.
• Auto Attendant provides a personalised greeting message and a menu offering latest news updates for the care home.
• Information flow can be sped up with the Push-to-Talk intercom feature which can be used to make announcements through the desk phone speaker.
• With the UC Office App installed on mobile devices and tablets for nursing staff and support team, they can keep in close contact. Instant Messaging can be used to communicate sensitive information discreetly with escalation to phone calls if and when required.

BENEFITS

Faster response to guests and patients

• There will be improved mobility and accessibility of the nursing and support staff.
• Staff can quickly and easily be reached on their mobile, desktop or their desk phone.

Reduce costs

• Free internal calls and staff use their own devices (mobile, tablets).
• Pay-as-you-use subscription service frees up capital to use for other care home funding requirements.
• Plug and play from any CAT5 data network socket will see cost reductions when compared to the cost associated with moving traditional desk phones.

Patient and guest phone service

• VoIPer desk phones can be easily moved to the guest’s bedside so they can make and receive calls to and from friends and family.
• Optionally, call detail records can be downloaded for use in billing back to the guest.

Healthcare: GP surgeries

BENEFITS