Devon & Cornwall Housing Group has implemented a unified communications infrastructure from ShoreTel, supported by Datasharp, to improve customer service and support flexible working.
The housing group, which manages 17,000 homes and employs 700 staff, has installed the 340-user system across its nine offices. The project began in June 2008 and went live during April 2009.
Gary Nelson, service development manager, Devon & Cornwall Housing Group, said, “We can now communicate better with our customers, who are predominantly young, via e-mail and SMS. In addition, they can now call us on the free 0300 number used by our new contact centres. ShoreTel’s system uses our customer profiles to tailor communication to the needs of a diverse community, including the needs of people with disabilities.”
The implementation comprises a new contact centre in Devon, an upgraded contact centre in Cornwall and a new telephony system. The system includes the ShoreTel Unified Communications System, ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager for Blackberry users, Syntellect call centre system and SMS Gateway from VoiceConnect.
Alan Robotham, group IT manager, Devon & Cornwall Housing Group, said, “ShoreTel means that we have a single, resilient communications system at all our sites. If one site fails, it can be seamlessly backed up by any other, without the need for us to buy additional hardware to create a costly duplicated network.”
