Retail
Retail
If there’s one sector that faces constant competition, but that needs to provide top-notch customer service whilst cutting costs, it’s retail. These challenges are just the sort that our Wholesale Hosted Communications solutions were designed for.
The challenges
• Competition from online and high street stores leads to intense pressure to manage and cut costs.
• As a retailer, you need to provide a consistently good experience across all your channels: online, call centres and multiple stores.
• Coping with changing customer demands at different times of the year can be hard.
• Sometimes, employees struggle to answer calls quickly while trying to help customers at the same time.
• It can be difficult to separate calls that can easily be dealt with by automation.
• You need real-time communications across different sites.
• Old PBX systems from several different manufacturers cost more to maintain, give variable results and give you more suppliers to manage.
The solution
• With WHC, you can increase or decrease your SIP channels as required to reflect demand.
• You can also add extra trunks as your business grows and makes and takes more calls.
• You can route incoming calls to the right person or to the right automated message using auto attendant, so your callers aren’t kept waiting.
• Calls can be routed to your staff based on their expertise, so the right person is on hand to get it right first time for the customer.
• If you’ve got more than one store, calls can be answered within a few rings by staff anywhere, on any device. You’ll see where the customer called so you can answer the call in the right way.
• You can review after-hours call activity with call detail records.
• Use your phone as an intercom with the push-to-talk feature.
• Give your employees free internal calls on their own devices with our Office UC app. They can also check the availability of their colleagues and send them instant messages (IM).
• Make your communications as agile as your business with cordless solutions, so you’re no longer rooted to the spot.
• You get peace of mind built in for free with our advanced fraud management system.
• Low-cost, fully functional call centre capability.
The benefits
Better customer service
• Get it right first time for your customers by directing the right calls to the right staff; with the right skills.
• High-definition (HD) voice is crystal clear, so you won’t make mistakes because of misheard messages.
• Answer calls within a couple of rings, so customers aren’t kept waiting for ages, or even worse, call someone else instead.
Higher productivity
• Cope with seasonal fluctuations in demand by adding or removing lines as needed.
• Speed up your communications with apps that allow you to use IM, check the availability of colleagues (presence), and call for free from your mobile devices.
• Free up your customer-facing staff by directing calls to automated messages for simple queries, such as store opening hours.
Lower costs
• With lower line rental and cheaper call costs (on net calls are completely free), you’ll be saving money from day one.
• If you’re ready to move to full IP voice, just closing down your old ISDN lines is a substantial saving.
• If you’re still recovering your investment in a PBX, you can benefit by connecting your PBX to the cloud to enjoy all the savings that hosted brings.
Consistent experience
• Provide a consistent experience across all your stores. For example, you can provide the same ‘on hold’ message to customers whichever store they call.
Rapid deployment (‘business as usual’)
• Setting up the service is as easy as plugging the desk phones into a data network, so you can get on with serving customers.
Always protected
• Our fraud management system ensures protection against telephony fraud, a huge and growing financial risk to businesses of all sizes.