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New voice for Worcester
Worcester Community Housing has embarked on a £50 million, six-year programme of improved efficiency and better service delivery, encompassing considerable spending on property, resources, infrastructure and technology. To achieve its goals, Worcester Community Housing recognised the importance of developing a highly-skilled, mobile and responsive workforce, supported by an IT and communication infrastructure that could support its future growth and development.
Having relied in the past on a service level agreement with Worcester City Council for all ICT support and with the existing telephony system operating at full-capacity on standalone BT lines, Worcester Community Housing needed to implement a new system that would support seamless communication across more than 20 sites, facilitate home working and provide disruption-free support for the organisation's move to its own offices.
Andrew Lycett, finance director, Worcester Community Housing, said, "Our ability to provide a good service to tenants was severely limited by the lack of a cohesive voice system. Our system was out of date, poorly supported and having a detrimental impact on our business."
The VoIP telephony solution supplied by Integrate brings all sites onto a single network and provides improved call management capabilities while integrating with the existing call centre operations, resulting in better communication between staff and tenants. Furthermore, Integrate's solution allows the telephony changeover to be independent of the office relocation, simplifying the move itself.
Due to free calls across sites, unified messaging with voice mails sent in an e-mail format and integrated call conference facilities, productivity is expected to improve with faster response times, reduced meeting times and therefore lower costs.
Andrew Lycett said, "We have invested in a system that will increase efficiency, reduce our call costs and connect all users to one central system, without the worry that we will outgrow Integrate's system as we can add users and locations to the voice network when needed."
Housing Association: Worcester Community Housing
Topic: Customer Management, Mobile Working
Publication Date: 002 - March 2008