Welcome to our mini-series, where we hand over to an Onecom customer to tell their story of ‘business as unusual’ during the on-going pandemic. We will hear how they adapted operational and customer service models during lockdown, whilst continuing to deliver simply brilliant customer experiences.
Our second success story comes from Onecom customer Countrywide, the UK’s largest property services group.
Countrywide had recently partnered with Onecom to digitally transform its infrastructure, investing in a Mitel Cloud Unified Communication and Contact Centre service, powered by and delivered through Onecom’s Cloud Communications Platform.
Countrywide are UK’s largest property services group employing some 10,000 colleagues specialising in residential and commercial property. With over 60 established brands such as Bairstow Eves, Bridgfords, Hampton’s International, John D Wood, Mann and Taylor’s and trading through more than 700 High Street branches across the UK; the businesses needed to expedite its remote working telephony and IT capability in order to support a remote working team as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Onecom were able to quickly deploy systems and services enabling Countrywide to continue to support their customers through homeworking. As the project approached the second phase of implementation, COVID-19 struck, and a remote working service was needed quickly.
Within a week of placing an order with Onecom, a rapid deployment solution was designed and implemented enabling Countrywide colleagues to seamlessly work from home.
Colin Tigg, Head of IT Procurement at Countrywide said: "It’s critical that Countrywide property management teams are available and responsive to manage our tenants essential and emergency housing needs.
"The COVID-19 crisis presented a huge challenge to the business as it required us to operate our business-critical functions from home, with minimal service interruption to our customers.
Countrywide prides itself on delivering an excellent customer experience, and with the help of the highly adept and agile team at Onecom, we are able to continue to support our customers and business operations efficiently and effectively.”
Countrywide’s homeworking employees are using a solution from global leader Mitel. The service enables communication and collaboration to deliver successful homeworking - managing personalised customer interactions, customer relations within the company portfolio of brands and interconnectivity between teams, through a managed Cloud based app that works anywhere on all devices - mobile, tablet or laptop.
Nick Beardsley, Enterprise Director at Onecom said: “It was imperative for Onecom to ensure that Countrywide’s core services were sustained during this challenging time, and that the required workforce were quickly and seamlessly transitioned to homeworking. By harnessing the very best in Cloud technology, we were able to design and deliver a homeworking service within 7 days.
As for the future, Colin Tigg added, “This unprecedented time has been a steep learning curve for the property industry as we have had to quickly adapt our business processes and the way in which we interact with our customers.
"Working with the right partners, such as Onecom, and utilising crisis systems and technology has allowed us to maintain operations and to continue to support our customers despite this challenging environment.”
To understand how Onecom could help your business deliver simply brilliant customer experiences, improve Net Promoter Scores and provide operational agility, chat to us today. We're proud to be supporting businesses throughout the pandemic with several free of charge remote working solutions, as well as working on long-term future success road maps in preparation for a new way of working