Case study - Countrywide.
Unified Communications & Collaboration.
Customers of Countrywide farmers benefit
from state-of-the-art contact centre.
BT helps transform customer service with dynamic call handling through a Unified
Communications and Contact Centre solution.
Relocating business premises is rarely without challenges. But
Countrywide Farmers turned their move to a new purposebuilt HQ and contact centre into an opportunity to enhance
customer service, both internally and externally, through a
new communications infrastructure.
As a leading supplier of products and services to the rural
community, Countrywide prides itself on being able to
provide thorough advice to its customers, through a good
understanding of the rural way of life and by training specific
call operators in new and specialist product areas.
They needed a solution that could be easily deployed and
managed, to enhance day to day operations as well as improve
their contact centre flexibility and provide a platform for
future expansion.
A fast moving business with seasonal peaks and troughs,
the system needed to be able to react in ‘real time’ to deal
with customer enquiries by dynamically routing calls to the
best available agent. Previously any changes made to their
inbound call routing required IT involvement, so a change to
accommodate a seasonal spike in orders for example, could
take several days to be implemented, with a knock on effect on
customer service.
BT ensured we moved to our
new premises without interruption
to our business.
Steve Bowen
Head of customer service, Countrywide
Expertise in Unified Communications.
BT’s position as a leading provider of unified communications
solutions, underpinned by its reputation for combining
technical expertise with skilled project management, were
crucial factors in Countrywide Farmers’ decision to award them
the contract.
BT’s Contact Centre solution provided call routing decisions from
a system wide perspective, taking into consideration the available
skills and resources across all sites before directing a call.
Case Study - Countrywide.
Transforming working practices.
The new functionality will enable the planned introduction of
flexible and home working options to ensure business continuity
during periods of disruption such as severe weather.
The solution has removed the need for IT to manage contact
centre call traffic.
The contact centre management team now ensure that seasonal
peaks and staff absences are handled quickly and effectively by
their direct management and control of the system.
Capabilities such as dynamic call handling and voicemail
announcements that are automatically updated based on
a person’s Presence and calendar status have driven an
improvement in employee productivity, increased individual
efficiency and boosted staff morale.
Simplicity through single server
architecture.
By interfacing to the diaries, voicemail and Interactive Voice
Response, the solution has transformed customer call handling
by giving staff full visibility of their colleagues’ availability.
Furthermore, by simplifying the provision of advanced
functionality such as skills-based routing, multi-site
networking and multi-media queuing, through single server
architecture, the solution delivers a high level of flexibility
and manageability with a lower cost of ownership - as well as
being easily scaled and relocated.
Now Countrywide’s 200 plus employees, including 50 contact
centre agents, are able to access a full range of capabilities
through one interface embedded within their Outlook email
system including access to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM
system for the contact centre agents.
Presence and its integration to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM
system have significantly improved customer service, enhancing
Countrywide’s ability to build solid relationships with its
customers and ensuring call queues are dealt with swiftly.
The system’s ease of use within Outlook and the unification with
calendar and address books have delivered enhanced productivity
and significant time savings for all users on a daily basis.
Says Steve Bowen, head of customer service at Countrywide:
“BT created an integrated and flexible IT solution that
supports our high standards in customer service. Delivering
on time and on budget, BT ensured we moved to our new
premises without interruption to our business.”
Our business is hugely seasonal.
The system gives us the visibility to put
more operators into relevant areas, so
that we can meet customer demands.
David Asquith
Commercial director, Countrywide
The solution currently covers three sites, with plans to bring
two further remote locations onto the network in a further
phase of the project.
Find out more:
itservices@bt.com | www.bt.com/itservices 2
Cisco, the Cisco logo, Cisco TelePresence and Cisco Systems are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries.
Microsoft Dynamics is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
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