Switchvox Support

From stethoscopes to waiting room furniture, Medisave is an established supplier of medical & nursing equipment. In the UK, it occupies a 20,000 square foot warehouse with over 9,000 product lines. At any one time the company can stock up to 190,000 individual items managed by an advanced stock control system. Medisave has a growing international presence and operates in 16 countries worldwide with offices and warehousing as far away as Auckland, New Zealand.

Challenge

Medisave previously used a variety of VOIP systems to link its UK, US, Canada and Australia offices and to service its sales, customer service, and back office communication requirements.

Graham Wright, Managing Partner at Medisave, commented on the lack of reliability of these systems and the significant time it took to maintain, support, and troubleshoot them.

Solution

After researching several alternative solutions, Medisave chose a Switchvox turnkey IP PBX solution because of its reliability and affordable UC features.

Medisave purchased a Switchvox SMB AA60 appliance along with Polycom handsets from Foehn Ltd., a UK Switchvox reseller and integrator.

Implementation

The Switchvox system setup was straightforward and provided Medisave with these key commercial applications:

• When calls into sales and customer service queues are answered, the system interrogates the caller ID in the Medisave database, and all order records from that customer automatically are displayed on the system monitor, making the call productive for both parties.
• Similarly, in the US where ground shipping of products is the most likely form of transport, when customer calls are answered, a Google Map screen of the caller's location is displayed so the Medisave employee can have an idea of the expected delivery times.
• Individual employees benefit from intuitive, user friendly control panels. For example, they can manage their voicemail easily; call numbers displayed in their web browser, and set their own hunt groups and find-me follow-me rules—all without IT involvement.
• For those who need crisp and clear lines of communication for relaying postcodes, delivery information, prices, etc., Medisave makes use of Polycom handsets with HD voice.
• All communications across the four office locations are managed from the PBX hub in the UK. Switchvox handles VOIP calls reliably, allowing Medisave to capitalize on cost savings derived from use of the internet.

Results

Graham explains: "Now employees are empowered to control their own communications. For instance, someone can work from home and still log into the sales queue and manage order inquiries from there. Similarly, when we have a busy period of sales calls, typically Monday and Tuesday mornings, it's really easy for employees from other departments with just a click of a button to join the sales queue in the morning, then stop receiving calls in the afternoon."

The embedded Switchvox system at Medisave has provided a reliable system that has reduced IT support levels, improved employee productivity, and provided better service to its customers.