UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS CASE STUDY

IMS OF SMITHFIELD

Company Name:

IMS of Smithfield

Headquarters:

Cedar Way Industrial Estate, 27 Cedar Way
London, N1C 4PD, UK

The IMS of Smithfield was established in 1970, in London’s Smithfield Market near the St Bartholomew’s Square. The founder’s vision was to his company to grow to be the market leader in the meat industry. The business model was created with four components: quality, trust, reliability and service. The outcome was that IMS of Smithfield created the best possible customer experience and was established as the premier meat company it is up to this day.

The Challenge

With their growing business, IMS of Smithfield’s call levels were increasing significantly. However, it soon found that its incumbent telephony provider was failing to cope with the demand. The queue time and abandoned call rate were unacceptably high and customers complained that it took several attempts to speak to the right person. This was impacting orders and in turn profitability.

The Objectives

With a wide range of telephony solution providers on the market, IMS of Smithfield commissioned a thorough review of its options. It was important to source a cost-effective solution, which would enable a positive customer experience, as well as being available to deploy quickly. Additionally, it was important that IMS of Smithfield not only obtain voice capabilities, but they also wanted to utilise best of breed, class leading unified communications and collaboration tools, so the business could always maximise the quality of its communication with their customers.

What makes TWC so special for IMS of Smithfield?

Source: imsofsmithfield.com

Based in London for the last 40 years, IMS of Smithfield has established itself as one of the UK’s leading suppliers of meat, poultry, game and associated meat products to the catering industry. It is a family run business that has instilled strong, yet ethical, commercial values across its business practices. As a result, they have continued to expand their client base, exceeding supplier expectations on quality, service and price. IMS of Smithfield places great emphasis on the quality of interaction with customers. They understand the different requirements and challenges their diverse customer base brings. IMS of Smithfield prides itself on providing a First Contact Resolution service and seeks to differentiate itself from its competitors by enabling simple and clear communication.

The Solution

After careful consideration, IMS of Smithfield chose to implement TWC IT Solution’s cloud unified communications solution to resolve its problems. This was deployed quickly and efficiently, enabling a reduction in abandoned calls by improving customer communication. IMS of Smithfield provided their caller with an IVR (auto-attendant) to route their calls to the person most able to deal with their query. The unified communications platform recognises the customer and intelligently routes the call. This means the call can be delivered to the appropriate person in the appropriate team, increasing efficiency. Importantly it routes a customer that is enquiring about a certain product to the agent most likely to make the sale. This is measured by metrics, which are pulled into the analytics by the platform. If a person is not in the office, the system delivers the call to the agent’s mobile device.

Source: senivpetro – www.freepik.com

If an individual is still not available, the system will continue seamlessly searching for an appropriate person. This is all done in a matter of milliseconds, so the customer doesn’t feel any impact of this process. This approach ensures the customer does not experience voice mail or end up being passed from person to person having to repeat their requirements or personal information. The rapid decision making is enabled by IMS of Smithfield’s staff using the communicator application, which knows the presence of each user on the unified communications platform. All direct lines have been removed and mobile numbers integrated into the system, allowing the consistency in call handling. Commenting on the deployment, Christian Raggio, Managing Director said, “It was important that the new cloud-based telephony system was implemented without any impact on our customers. TWC ensured a smooth transition to its leading-edge solution and provided training to enable us to get the best business result in a short period of time.”

The Business Outcome

Through the installation of a cloud unified communications solution, tailored to meet its precise requirement, IMS of Smithfield was able to radically improve the quality of its customer experience.

✓ Abandoned calls were reduced from 40% to 0%.
✓ Queue waiting times were reduced from 5 minutes to a few seconds
✓ With the mobility options, IMS of Smithfield was able to increase the efficiency of staff.
✓ Because more customers were speaking with staff more quickly, IMS of Smithfield benefited from a significant increase in Customer Satisfaction.
✓ Outbound sales calls increased by over 100% thanks to the click-to-dial functionality within the cloud platform.

Summary

TWC’s solution has enabled IMS of Smithfield to provideits customers with the service levels they expect, at an affordable price. Reflecting on the project, Christian Raggio commented “We needed a solution which didn’t come with a huge price tag. TWC met all our expectations within budget and on time. The ongoing relationship with them has been excellent – I am not sure how we managed before implementation.”

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