Law firm Frettens sees service levels soar with New IP Phone System from 3Com
Snapshot
Occupying a prominent office in the heart of Christchurch, Dorset, Frettens LLP operates in the competitive world of private and commercial legal services. Its reputation as a leader in its field is built on the high quality of service it has provided clients, both locally and nationally, since 1978.
In order to meet the needs of its clients, the company’s teams of solicitors and legal executives spend a great deal of their time on the telephone.
Tim Piper
Director of Finance, Frettens LLP
In April 2006, a fault in the company’s outdated phone system lead to a number of calls being lost; while other calls were left unanswered, or failed to make it to voice mail. Not only was this a considerable inconvenience for company and clients alike, the practice was in danger of compromising its excellent customer service record.
Frettens sought advice from Modrus, its long-serving and trusted IT services company, which recommended replacing the system with an Internet Protocol (IP) telephony solution from 3Com.
Following a remarkably speedy implementation, Frettens found the 3Com solution afforded much more than the means to deliver a great service – the new phone system could also be used to measure staff performance and offered a level of scalability and flexibility ideally suited to its growing business.
Challenges
By 2006, Frettens’ four-year-old Samsung phone system was becoming a concern. Two of the practice’s heaviest phone users, the conveyancing and re-mortgaging departments, were losing calls or unable to pick them up.
Across the company the voice mail system kept failing and onscreen displays weren’t working. Reception, on average handling a call every 40 seconds, was struggling as unanswered calls bounced back.
Edward Armitage
Managing Director, Modrus Ltd
“With our old phone system we probably lost 10 calls a day,” says Tim Piper, Director of Finance at Frettens. “We were concerned that we were failing to meet customers’ expectations with regards to the service we provide.”
The phone system also made it difficult to remove users and add the increasing number of new staff joining as the company continued to expand. The situation was further exacerbated by a support company unwilling or unable to help.
“Moving individuals and groups of people around wasn’t easy,” confirms Piper. ‘We’re growing fast and, from an operational point of view, it was important we addressed these problems as soon as possible.”
Faced with a choice of repairing the existing, failing system or purchasing a replacement system, Frettens turned to Modrus for advice.
“Repairing it would have been throwing good money after bad,” says Edward Armitage, Managing Director of Modrus. “The biggest driver for throwing out the old system was that it was so unstable. Frettens wanted a proven solution.
“The 3Com IP phone system, which offers unbeatable reliability and the flexibility to easily expand the phone system as the company grows, fitted the bill perfectly.”
Not only did the 3Com IP solution meet all of Frettens criteria, it cost less to implement than repairing the existing system.
Why 3Com
A Stable Phone System that is Built to Last
Modrus recommended a 3Com IP phone system comprising an NBX V3000 platform and a mixture of basic and business phones, backed by its Express Maintenance Service with 24x7 support.
Ideal for small to medium-size businesses, the 3Com NBX V3000 platform allows for affordably improved communications with powerful built-in call processing features to ensure maximum reliability.
Features include 400 hours of voice mail storage, four auto-attendant/voice mail ports and award-winning software that allows phones to be easily managed from a PC screen – all of which can help reduce costs and accommodate rapid business growth.
The ability to set up hunt/call groups, which share responsibility for a single departmental phone number, allow the system to be tailored to suit the needs of the company quickly, while Call Detail Reporting provides the means to measure staff performance.
Both the 3Com 3101 Basic Phone with Speaker and the 3102 Business Phone support Session Internet Protocol (SIP) or native 3Com NBX call control and offer a range of features designed to optimise voice communications.
The 3102 Business Phone provides the flexibility of 18 programmable buttons with LED indicators and offers the convenience of 10 fixed-feature buttons, including speaker, redial, conference, transfer, hold, voice mail, forward to mail, hands-free and mute.
Fast Implementation and little need for Staff Training
Tim Piper, Frettens LLP
In addition, the simple design of the phones means that very little training is needed for staff to feel confident using them, allowing for fast implementation and minimum disruption.
“3Com products are built in a very logical way making them very straightforward to set up. We were actually able to set up 80 phones in a single evening,” confirms Modrus’ Armitage. “We began implementing the new system in the middle of April, 2006, and by the beginning of May the system was live.”
Once implemented, staff took to the new 3Com IP solution very quickly. The firm immediately felt the benefits of the improved sound quality of the calls and the excellent call holding and forwarding functions.
Hunt Groups allow for greater Customer Service
Hunt groups were set up for the conveyancing, re-mortgage, and accounts teams, as well as reception. These ensure that if a call isn’t immediately picked up by a particular member of a team, it’s automatically made available to another member of the team. If the call is still unanswered it defaults to voice mail.
“Setting up the hunt groups was very easy,” says Piper. “The simplicity of the system means outside management is kept to a minimum. Myself and other IT staff have access to the system administrator and can make any changes we need through a web interface.
“You can tailor the system to the needs of each team so that calls don’t default to voice mail too often. Little things like that are very useful.”
Call Detail Reporting offers the means to Measure Performance
Another benefit of the 3Com NBX V3000 IP system is the ability to use call data to measure performance using Call Detail Reporting. Frettens is able to extract all statistics during any given timescale. This data can then be exported into Access or Excel for analysis enabling trends within teams to be identified with ease.
Piper says: “We can see at a glance which teams are getting more calls than others. If we see one taking 20 per cent more calls than the rest, we know we need to allocate more resources to that team.”
Frettens can also compare the ratio of incoming to outgoing calls to judge proactivity, and it can tell which teams are picking up calls in the fewest rings, giving an indication of how well they are coping with their workload.
In addition to this, the system’s call-time recording facility allows Frettens’ lawyers to accurately time their billable calls.
Scalability and Flexibility ensure a Future-Proof System
Edward Armitage, Modrus Ltd
With Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the NBX V3000 can easily accommodate remote users and offshore operations on the network, serving up to 1500 users. VoIP provides the means to integrate computer applications such as email, fax, web conferencing and videophone with the telephone system, saving money and energy as it combines all of the services into a single application.
Users are able to access their voice mail via the internet, forward voice messages to email accounts and play them back on a PC. VoIP also offers call diversion or forwarding, and the ability to have more than one number ring at once; plus all the features associated with traditional phone lines, including conference calling, call waiting, caller display and faxing.
And, with 3Com being an open-standards organisation, its products operate with virtually any system. As Armitage says: “3Com’s open-standards solutions offer all the flexibility and interoperability you could want.”
Looking Ahead
With 3Com’s IP phone system, Frettens has found a reliable and future-proof solution with the capability to provide vital management information that can help address specific operational issues.
Above all, it has enabled Frettens to provide the excellent customer service the company prides itself on. “It is of the utmost importance how we handle customers on the phone. We want to give our clients the best service we can. The new 3Com system enables us to do just that,” says Piper.
While companies like Frettens continue to discover the benefits of moving over to an IP phone system, Armitage is concerned many companies are still blind to the advantages the technology offers.
“The NBX VoIP platform is future-proof and, having been on the market for a number years, is proven to offer excellent quality and reliability. We use the system ourselves, which impressed Frettens,” he says. “In our experience, 3Com’s IP systems are the most reliable on the market.”
Goal
A flexible, cost-effective and reliable telephony solution
Improve customer service levels
Solution
Design, deployment and support: Modrus Limited
3Com 3101 Basic Phone with Speaker
Result
Enhanced reliability that dramatically improves customer service
A flexible and scalable solution ideal for an expanding business
Failover and voice mail facilities that ensure all calls are dealt with effectively
The means to measure staff performance using Call Data Reporting
pdf version of this case study.