Red Star Telecom

Red Star Telecom “The decision to use a network based service rather than a traditional PBX was an easy one to make.” Karen Pownall, Call Centre Manager, Britannia Hotels Call: 0800 804 6098 partners.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/inbound Lines are open Mon-Fri 9am-5pm The challenge Increasing flexibility Meeting future requirements Britannia Hotels needed to consolidate their telephone contact and booking system across its nationwide chain of hotels. The solution Inbound solution In conjunction with Redstar Telecom, a specialist in inbound call management and TalkTalk Business partner for over 8 years, Britannia Hotels now benefit from a hosted IVR system, which combines over 40 different systems into one. partners.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/inbound The benefits An improved service proposition Centralised processes Automatic upgrades Reduced operating expenditure partners.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/inbound Can a hosted solution work for “It’s all portal based, a large call centre? so it’s very easy to Yes, says leading UK leisure group, Britannia Hotels. The company had set up. I can change established a 90 seat centre for managing bookings, using a hosted the numbers that IVR provided by TalkTalk Business. calls are routed to, The firm operates a nationwide network of 33 hotels with almost 7,000 alter the messaging, bedrooms between them. These include some of the best known names switch recording on in the country, such as The Adelphi in Liverpool, The Grand Metropole in Blackpool and The Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton. and off. I can Although Britannia Hotels has been trading for almost 33 years, many completely self of the hotels in the group have been acquired in the last decade. Historically, manage it.” each hotel has been responsible for its own booking systems. Karen Pownall, Today’s travellers and agents, however, demand the convenience of a Call Centre Manager, centralised system, which also brings clear business benefits to the Britannia Hotels group as a whole. Centralised processes “We wanted to centralise our processes,” explains Karen Pownall, Call Centre Manager for Britannia Hotels, “to make sure everyone was following the same procedures. It means that we can control rate and yield management, and have the management tools to assess overall group performance. It also gives us the ability to cross promote hotels to our customers where appropriate.” Britannia Hotels approached its communications provider, Redstar Telecom, a TalkTalk Business partner and a specialist in inbound call management. “We spent quite a bit of time designing a complex IVR with Britannia Hotels,” explains Redstar Telecoms Managing Director, James Doak, “and planning out how calls for each hotel would be handled in terms of queuing, management information and call recording. In effect, you have 40 IVRs acting as one.” Each IVR is similarly set up, but is tailored for the hotel in question. So booking options for spa treatments or banquet facilities, for example, are available where appropriate. “There’s no equipment on site at all,” says Doak, “everything is network based which allows them to queue and record calls in the cloud, and control all the settings from a web based interface. In the case of a disaster, they can simply call into an automated switch to move it to recovery status.” “The decision to use a network based service rather than a traditional PBX was an easy one to make,” says Pownall. “I didn’t have any reservations, purely from a support point of view,” she explains. “We don’t have a telecoms department, and we only have a small IT team. If we’d bought in our own equipment we’d have had to buy a telecoms manager in with it too.” Doak estimates that to provide the same functionality using an on site PBX would have cost over £60,000, whereas set up costs for the hosted solution were less than £10,000. It’s not just about reducing capex for companies trading in a tough market, though, there are substantial ongoing savings to be made too. What’s more, seats can be added or removed at the touch of a button. And if Britannia Hotels want to add a second centre to increase capacity, or introduce home working agents, there’s no extra equipment cost to do so. partners.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/inbound Improvement in service Pownall also estimates that around 30% of calls which come into the centre are for services like restaurant bookings or directions, and need to be dealt with directly by the hotel in question. Thanks to the IVR, they are redirected automatically, allowing her staff to focus on reservations. “The other key advantage of a network based IVR, is that it never becomes obsolete. As TalkTalk Business upgrade the functionality within the cloud, customers gain the benefits straight away” adds TalkTalk Business’ Andy Hollingworth. Britannia Hotels call centre now operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and Karen Pownall is very happy with the management tools at her disposal. “It’s all portal based, so it’s very easy to set up,” she says, “I can change the numbers that calls are routed to, alter the messaging, switch recording on and off. I can completely self manage it.” Redstar Telecom will also be working even more closely with TalkTalk Business in the future, after judging this project a complete success. partners.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/inbound.

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