In order to reduce support costs, improve staff efficiency and deliver a better standard of service to their customers, Accord Housing used leading managed services provider Network Defence to deploy an integrated IP telephony system to provide a professional front-end call centre to the organisation.

 

Having experienced a major outage at one site Accord needed a more resilient data network and voice service. The new IP telephony system now supports a more resilient call centre where customers can call in on a 0300 number and be immediately directed to the appropriate department. The organisation also now has access to more advanced comms features such as call quality monitoring, call response monitoring and centralised data management.

 

Ian Tinsley, information systems manager for Accord Housing, said: “As it was over a decade old our previous telephony system was nearing capacity and had limited call centre functionality. Additionally, due to the growth of the business the system has become disparate and getting an upgrade to gain additional telecoms services would have been extremely costly. We needed a solution that would reduce our long-term costs, simplify administration and enhance customer service.

 

“Network Defence provided us with a solution that has helped to do all this and streamlined our whole telecomms system - saving people calling in from being passed from pillar to post. Having worked with them before we know their experience and knowledge gets results and their consultative approach has yet again given us an effective solution to our problem. We now have access to a multitude of comms functionalities which staff find easy to use, and importantly, the newly integrated system has enabled us to comply with the Audit Commission’s standards of a more unified system.”

 

Network Defence partnered with NTL: Telewest to replace Accord Housing’s previous digital telephony system with a Cisco call manager phone system and Cisco contact centre.