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Pitmans op for IP telephony
Faced with meeting the challenges of the Legal Services Act, John Hargrave, finance director of Thames Valley-based Pitmans, identified telephony as a critical area where the firm could differentiate itself by increasing customer service and overall productivity.
"However our 18 year old hardware-based system was starting to see the strain as we continued to expand it. It was increasingly difficult and expensive to add new users and there was no way it could be integrated in our core business processes."
After researching the market, Pitmans felt they needed "a software-based product that has been designed as an IP telephony solution from scratch, not as an afterthought". Hargrave adds "Another key factor was we wanted our supplier to have the same business culture as ourselves - highly responsive and customer-focussed. Pitmans solution was to go with Swyx reseller Atia Communications and a SwyxWare software based telephony solution.
According to Hargrave, the SwyxWare implementation "revolutionised" the way Pitmans conducts its business. "We have consolidated our receptionist activities so calls can be answered from any location based on availability. With CLI, we can also fast-track the principals of our largest clients directly through to the relevant senior partner, without going through reception. This provides exactly what we want for the future - a high level of personal service and customer care. We can also record all calls and attach the resulting .wav file to a client record accordingly. It is also possible to direct calls accordingly. It is also possible to direct calls according to the type of enquiry and relevant division."
Hargrave says Swyx has also had an impact on the bottom line. Being software-based all moves and changes can be handled internally whereas in the past each move required an engineer to be called out at £100 a time. For a firm like Pitmans, where there may be 10-15 changes a month, this is a major saving. Turning to the future, the firm plans to offer softphones as an alternative to traditional handsets, as well as integrating Swyx with Pitmans' CRM system.
