Fishpools has always maintained an ethos of delivering outstanding customer service. However, the experience for customers contacting the business by phone no longer accurately reflected this standard, with outdated technology impacting both service and sales.

Customer Experience: The phone system in place was unreliable and frequently suffered from poor call quality and limited functionality. Transferring calls relied on a printed list of extension numbers, and once a call had been transferred, it could not be passed on again - often resulting in dead ends for customers. Reception staff had no visibility over what happened after a call was transferred, which sometimes left customers waiting or unable to reach the right department.

Commercial Impact: The system was leading to a significant loss of sales opportunities and enquiries – with a single phone running in one department alone left ringing and unanswered, resulting in more than 700 missed calls in just two months. There was no way to track and report on missed calls and delays in getting customers to the departments they needed to reach.

The communications infrastructure at Fishpools needed to be strategically transformed to give its dedicated staff the tools they needed to deliver on their commitment to excellence. Having been let down by a previous telecoms partner, the business turned to Onecom for support in developing and implementing a new system.

Our specialists led on a collaborative approachto identify the issues and recommend asolution – conducting a thorough assessment. This even included spending a full day on-site at Fishpools to truly understand its existing phone system and daily workflows.

As a trusted Zoom partner, Onecom recommended a Zoom Phone cloud-hosted telephone solution. While it supports physical desk phones for employees on the shop floor, the system's core functionality is delivered through softphones – software applications on computers and mobile devices. The system also provides Wi-Fi-enabled walkabout phones for warehouse staff.

As a unified communications platform, Zoom Phone goes beyond simple audio calls, integrating instant messaging, video conferencing and real-time user presence, allowing employees to see their colleagues' availability and seamlessly switch between different communication methods from a single platform. The rollout was meticulously planned and rolled out with minimal issues, earning praise from the senior management team at Fishpools. Onecom provided personalised, targeted training sessions for core users such as the reception team, ensuring staff were confident with using the system.

Existing extension numbers and physical hardware were largely retained to minimise disruption, allowing staff to maintain familiarity with their current setup. The new system provides a much better user experience, as users can now easily search for colleagues, departments or call queues by name directly within the Zoom app, rather than relying on printed lists.

The partnership between Fishpools and Onecom/Zoom resulted in a number of immediately noticeable benefits:

• Better call quality, which has received positive feedback from customers, who likened change to moving from 'analogue to digital'.

• A decrease of between 15% to 18% in missed calls.

• Improved call routing, leading to an easier, faster and more seamless customer journey.

• Reduced missed calls, with the ability to track and manage calls, leading to fewer missed sales opportunities, directly leading to an increase in sales.

• Increased visibility, with real-time analytics and reporting capabilities providing insights into call volumes and routing, enabling customer experience to be further refined. 

• Increased productivity, as the Zoom app untethers staff from their desks. 

• Call transcription, giving teams an accurate record of customer conversations and eliminating the need to manually take notes for information such as delivery details. 

Onecom and Fishpools are exploring opportunities to build on the system, for example by using AI companion, Zoom Phone Assistant and Dynamics 365 tools to integrate with the existing CRM and potentially consolidating mobile contracts with Onecom.