Medisave

Switchvox SMB's Reliability Makes the Difference for Medisave

Overview

From stethoscopes to waiting room furniture, Medisave is an established supplier of medical & nursing equipment. In the UK, it trades out of a 20,000 square foot warehouse with over 9,000 product lines. At any one time the company can hold up to 190,000 individual items of stock which are 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 as Auckland, New Zealand.

Challenge

Medisave had previously been using a variety of VoIP systems to link four of its office locations based in UK, US, Canada and Australia and service its sales, customer service and back office communication requirements.

However Graham Wright, Managing Partner at Medisave commented on the lack of reliability of such systems and the significant time taken to maintain, support and troubleshoot them.

Solution

After researching a number of alternative solutions, Medisave chose Switchvox preferring to go for the turn-key IP PBX solution because of the reliability the system could offer combined with the affordable UC features it could provide.

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

Implementation

The set-up of the Switchvox system was straightforward and provided Medisave with some key commercial applications:

• When calls into sales and customer service queues are answered, the system interrogates the caller ID in Medisave's database and all order records from that customer automatically come up on screen making the call more 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 comes up so the Medisave employee can already have a good idea of expected delivery times.
• Individual Employees benefit from user-friendly, instinctive control panels. For example they can manage their voicemail more easily; call numbers displayed in their web browser and set their own hunt groups and find me follow me rules – all without IT support involvement.
• For those who need especially crisp and clear lines of communication i.e. for relaying postcodes, delivery information, prices etc. Medisave make use of Polycom handsets with HD voice.
• All communications across the 4 office locations are all managed from the PBX hub in the UK. Switchvox handles VoIP calls reliably allowing Medisave to capitalise on cost savings from the use of the internet.

Results

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

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