The UK's leading educational supplier deploys
IP telephony to provide 'outstanding customer service'

Contact centre selects 'pure' IP telephony from Swyx to capture all inbound calls and enhance outbound operation.

London, 10.12.2007 - Swyx a market-leading vendor of IP telephony solutions has been selected by The Consortium, the largest independent supplier of educational resources in the UK to replace their outdated TDM based system.
 
The new SwyxWare ‘pure’ IP telephony system was implemented by Swyx partner GP Telecoms. The new system will enable the company to capture all its customer calls, and reduce call waiting time during peak periods.
 
The Consortium employs 240 staff in the UK and is headquartered in Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
Business Support Director at The Consortium, Joe Caddell comments on the selection decision, “The problem with our incumbent system was its rigidity. For example, the call routing function was very cumbersome – to move staff from one type of call to taking another type required them to log out of one queue and then log in to the next, resulting in missed calls.
 
Maintenance was an on-going headache and even simple configurations required a call to our third-party support organisation which was not only very expensive, but also time consuming. ”He added, “The system did not offer the level of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) capability that we needed to deploy our new business development plans. All of these restrictions had an adverse effect on our ability to react to the seasonal peaks that occur in our business. During these periods the number of calls can triple from around 500 to over 1500 a day. We simply did not know how many potential sales calls we were missing.”

After considering 12 potential suppliers the company short-listed three contenders but eventually selected Swyx.

He continues, “After an exhaustive evaluation of our short-list that included an on-site demonstration, a small pilot operation and a review of reference sites and testimonials, the final selection was unanimous – Swyx was the number one choice of everybody involved.  Unlike the others, it was not reliant on any proprietary hardware therefore growth would not be restricted by physical limitations, it could integrate seamlessly into our existing data network environment and it was incredibly simple to configure and use.”

The Consortium has realised the following benefits from the Swyx implementation:

• The new call routing has enabled the company to capture almost every call that comes in with call backs to the few that are missed.
• The improved flexibility means that the company can meet changing customer demand quickly, ironing out the seasonal and daily peaks by adding new users simply and quickly and routing calls according to skill-set.
• Call recording has improved the quality of staff training – a facility that was price prohibitive on many of the competing solutions.
• The enhanced management reporting has moved the company from the ‘Stone Age’ to one which can act dynamically on real-time data to improve and fine-tune every aspect of the business operation.
• All moves and changes can now be carried out in-house.
• Supports new business requirements such as multi-branding.
• Have reduced overall running costs by 25% and has achieved an internal return on investment of nearly 30%.
• Voice mail has added a higher degree of professionalism to the operation.
• Have the ability to integrate their Infor System 21 ERP system in the near future to develop customer service, enhance their outbound new business campaigns and improve their customer retention.

Caddell concludes, “So far the project has been a complete success and has met all our selection criteria. This has been backed up by the support we have received from GP Telecoms, which has been excellent. The Swyx solution is now such an integral part of our business that our operation would suffer severely if we had to go back to our original TDM based phone system – The system has enabled us to deliver outstanding customer service”.