Manufacturer of Networking Products

Founded in Taiwan in 1986, with its headquarters in Taipei, the company is a leading manufacturer of advanced network communication products. The company’s global presence spans across Europe, America, China and Asia with its products sold in over 70 countries. The company maintains its branch offices for distribution and support in the US, China, Netherlands, UK, Poland, Romania, France and Russia.

Located in Milton Keynes, the UK branch office is responsible for sales and support activities in the UK market. The UK branch has been increasingly active in the last few years. In 2007, the company was looking to relocate their main UK office as part of an expansion programme and required a new business phone system at their new premises.

Business challenges

When considering a new business phone system, the manager wanted a solution that would address their unique business challenges. At that time, the number of calls for technical support requests to their support team in the UK had increased significantly due to the increasing popularity of their products. As a result, they needed to and call capacity and number of staffs. The company was on the verge of recruiting a new support person who wished to have the flexibility of work from home. Additionally, while their sales manager travelled frequently across the country to visit clients, the manager recognised the need of recruiting a new sales advisor located in the North of England to provide more convenient and timely services in that region.

The business phone systems need to address the needs for people who work outside the UK main office. Additionally, the manager was also interested in exploring new ways to reduce their overheads, such as call costs and line rental costs, whilst not compromising their service quality.

Our solutions

The VoiceSmart Phone System has proven to be an optimal choice for the company. The VoiceSmart Phone System server, run on a Windows PC, resides at the company’s new Milton Keynes office. The company chose to use software phone interfaces and headsets for its technology-minded support staff, who take advantage of the many innovative features and convenience that the soft phones can offer. The sales team opted to use SIP phones, which can work independently without any PC and function similar to traditional telephones.

Taking advantage of VoiceSmart’s remote login feature, the new support person and the new sales advisor can make or receive calls from home or a remote site as if working in the Milton Keynes office. They can additionally see the status of the other users and the telephone lines in real-time. Their status is also visible to colleagues in the main office. Calls into the Milton Keynes office can be transferred to the remote sales or support staff easily, free of charge regardless of their locations.

Thanks to VoiceSmart’s ability to make calls from either PSTN (BT telephone lines) or VoIP Internet telephony, the company subscribes to cost effective VoIP telephony services and make their outbound calls mainly from VoIP with the reduced number of PSTN lines as backup only. This arrangement has dramatically reduced the company’s call and rental costs, whilst still maintaining the reliability of a fixed-line telephone connection, should their internet telephony provider encounter problems.

Incorporating internet telephony providers into the system also allowed them to publish an Ireland (+33) phone number for the benefit of its customers in the Republic of Ireland. Calls to that number are directly routed to the main UK office in Milton Keynes without the company or the caller incurring an international or divert charge for each call.

Additionally, inbound calls are now first greeted by their auto attendant (with a customised welcome message) and routed automatically to the appropriate departments, improving corporate image and increasing efficiency. VoiceSmart PBX’s easy and user friendly interface also allows the company to self-support themselves and quickly makes configuration modifications if their requirements change, usually without any need to request an external support.

After evaluating several options of competing small business phone systems, the company is happy to choose VoiceSmart for its flexibility and a great array of innovative features, all at a competitive price.