NEC Shows That UCaaS Isn’t Just for Big Businesses
Organizations of all types and sizes are adopting unified communications as companies continue to use it. UC is still viewed as the domain of major organisations with the time and resources to select and manage the best solutions for their needs. Smaller businesses are worried that they will be left out of the process, forced to rely on off-the-shelf consumer items when fully featured, flexible, mobile-first alternatives are available.
Christopher Shaw Residential, a Bournemouth-based estate agency, has recently adopted UC. The company first turned to the technology during the pandemic but has found it to be so valuable that adoption has become permanent. As colleagues had to self-isolate, the company chose NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT UCaaS solution for its laptops and mobile clients.
“Our prior hosted small business telephone system was simply not flexible enough, and we were routing calls to our personal cell phones when we were on an appointment,” says Christopher Shaw Residential Operations Director James Tiller. “Now we can work from home as if we were in the office, and we don’t have to give anyone our personal phone numbers.”
Christopher Shaw Residential wanted to use a’mobile-first’ strategy because they have a highly mobile workforce that is frequently gone from the office for property viewings. This also had to deal with the issues of growing home working and self-isolation, which limited employee availability, while ensuring that clients received the normal quick responses to their inquiries.
“Our clients expect to get hold of us quickly regardless of our location,” says Tiller. “Recently, when two team members were ‘pinged’ and had to self-isolate, they were able to set up and work from home really easily using the UNIVERGE BLUE system operating as though they were in the office.”
From its Bournemouth headquarters, the company provides lettings, property management, and sales. The UNIVERGE BLUE user interface has shown to be simple to use, requiring no training for the team to use it efficiently. Furthermore, features like the Group Chat function are commonly used to enable quick internal communication.
“Because we operate on two floors, if a customer walks into the office, I can send a colleague to come down and visit them while I’m on the phone,” Tiller explains. “We can also call immediately from a webpage using the Click-to-dial option, which saves us a lot of time.”
Our team’s efficiency has increased by 100 percent as a result of the added flexibility provided by UNIVERGE BLUE, and best of all, we can now operate from any place while maintaining a high level of service to our clients.”
The UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT UCaaS solutions, which included desktop and mobile apps as well as NEC business telephones installed in the office, demonstrated that you don’t have to be a large firm to profit from UCaaS, and that you can obtain all the capabilities you need regardless of company size. Christopher Shaw Residential has seen better team communications and efficiency, but it is the flexible capabilities that have spurred uptake and allowed the company to operate during the epidemic, allowing smooth communications to clients and colleagues alike.