Hastoe Housing is now using software from Enghouse Interactive for its contact centre’s operations.
Amanda Harris, head of customer services, Hastoe Housing, said, “We offer a wide range of services to our local communities, and these are managed through a small contact centre of just eight advisors and a portal for online self-service. But our main interactions are by phone so it’s vital to have the right system to ensure calls are handled effectively.
“Also, because our call rate is very dependent on events such as bad weather where we have marked peaks and troughs, we needed a system that could handle a sudden surge of calls. Our previous call-routing system was causing some dissatisfaction and wasn’t robust enough, plus we needed to improve our reporting capabilities.”
Hastoe Housing began looking for a solution that could handle these variations in call numbers, provided clearer statistics for reporting, had a good wallboard so that everyone could see the current situation at a glance and a call-recording system for quality monitoring, coaching and complaint disputes.
Harris said, “We knew that we didn’t want a cloud-only approach because when we tried that in the past, it didn’t work out particularly well. What we were looking for was a solution that was easy-to-manage and run, and that delivered clear and concise updates and reporting.”
Hastoe Housing particularly liked the look and feel of the Enghouse Interactive Communications Centre and this has now been implemented by G3 Comms, alongside the Enghouse Quality Management Suite (QMS).
Harris said, “We had call recording on the previous system, but it was so difficult to access calls, replay them and assess their quality. With QMS, call monitoring has improved dramatically, saving us a day each month.
“In terms of call volumes, we’ve had to try to manage the load across a small team and this has been a challenge, but our customers know this and are usually prepared, within reason, to wait if they know where they are in a queue. That said, our customers are now getting a much better experience; in surveys, they are showing around 96 per cent satisfaction.”
