Gamma Horizon Hosted PBX Case Study
Who are Miller Metcalfe?
With a proud history spanning 125 years, Miller Metcalfe is a proud, family run, property services business. They have built an established and trusted network of 10 estate agency branches across the North West region. Two key figures in the business are CEO, John Fletcher and Director of Sales, Suzanne Dugdill.
Miller Metcalfe helps clients with buying, selling, letting, financial services, conveyancing, auctions
and surveys. In this highly competitive market and with customers expecting excellent levels of service and results, internal and external communication is crucial to the continued success of the
business.
What was the original challenge they faced?
With 10 branches across the North West all having significant numbers of enquiries coming in from prospects, existing customers, people interested in viewing properties and suppliers, effective communication channels were high on the list of business priorities.
Firstly, they wanted to enhance their service offering by never missing a call. John had no management information to go off in terms of calls coming in to the business as their old phone system didn’t allow it. He suspected across the 10 branches they were missing about 1000 calls a month though.
Suzanne was very keen to help further develop their team of staff. The old phone system didn’t have the functionality to record calls. This made it difficult to understand what employees were doing well and also the areas that needed improvement. In addition to aiding training and development, having calls recorded could further improve their customer service by helping with dispute resolutions and ensuring no mis-communications with important third parties such as solicitors and surveyors.
In addition, their old phone system could prove erratic at times, as it was connected solely to the internet. If the internet was down, people couldn’t get in touch with them. Even if just one of their ten branches was affected, this could result in a huge amount of lost enquiries and potentially lost revenue and sales.
How come Miller Metcalfe turned to Comms Consult?
Miller Metcalfe were impressed with the professionalism of Comms Consult throughout the quotation process. They’d also heard great things about their overall service delivery. The delivery of the project was a crucial factor in Miller Metcalfe’s decision-making process. They needed to have complete confidence that changing over from their old provider to a new provider would have as little disruption as possible across the branch network.
The price of the solution Comms Consult presented also greatly impressed. Despite 98 new phones, hosted systems across 10 sites, a much more stable service provider and the additional functionality they’d requested in terms of abandoned call monitoring and call recording functionality, Comms Consult were able to save Miller Metcalfe around £1300 per month.
What system did Comms Consult implement?
After listening to the exact needs of Miller Metcalfe and the functions that would be required of their new phone system, Comms Consult decided that the Gamma Horizon hosted solution would be the best option, whilst also representing excellent value for money.
This system is able to perform the management information tasks and the call recording functionality that Miller Metcalfe requested. It’s also built on a highly stable platform which improves system reliability. All these things add value to Miller Metcalfe’s service proposition and gives the leaders in the business more confidence in their service delivery.
In addition to the core applications, Gamma Horizon also handles functions such as automatic greetings
and out of hours messaging solutions. Call recording and management information, detailing insight about usage, amongst other things, can also be downloaded at any time.
Tell us more about the abandoned and lost call functionality...
This is one of the functions John and Suzanne at Miller Metcalfe love and now wouldn’t want to be without. At 11am, 2pm and 5pm each day, lists are produced showing details of any abandoned or unanswered calls. The branch staff can then call these numbers back. This win-win means that Miller Metcalfe have less chance of missing important calls or potential sales. In addition, prospects, existing customers, people wanting to arrange viewings and suppliers, have less chasing to do and therefore gain an improved service offering.
In fact, Geoff Bateson, MD at Comms Consult, had a meeting not so long ago with Suzanne Dugdill to see how things were going with the new system. A report was pulled off towards the end of the day which showed that, on that particular day, Miller Metcalfe had 67 missed or abandoned calls across their 10 branches. 66 of these calls were successfully called back.
Without the implementation of the new phone system from Comms Consult, Miller Metcalfe would have never known about these missed opportunities, let alone been able to act upon them. A perfect example of how an improved telephony system can positively impact your business!