Case Study - ABC Real Estates

Nowadays, customers rightly expect a high level of service. When they call a company, they want the phones to be
answered quickly and routed efficiently, even if they initially called the wrong number. This places an onus on businesses to ensure their phone system can support this expected service level. Many companies have outdated systems which they mistakenly believe will be expensive to replace, meaning they do nothing, and customers 
suffer as a result.

Aldermartin Baines & Cuthbert (ABC) Estates are well established estate agent in Edgware, Hendon and London. They offer a multitude of services including property sales and lettings as well as block management services. Their estate agents and staff are highly trained and are full accredited and qualified by a variety of bodies including ARMA, ARLA, NAEA and more.

What sets ABC apart is their belief in modern work practices coupled with traditional, old-fashioned values like
professionalism, quality service and an absolute commitment to keeping a promise. Obviously, being able to keep in touch with clients at all hours of the day is key to being able to meet their high customer service levels.

Getting the best out of IT and telecoms

Telecoms plays a critical role in every business in the 21st Century and ABC are no exception. With 3 locations across Greater London, it was vital that their telecoms infrastructure was integrated and flexible.

But in 2018, problems were being experienced as Stuart Lesser of ABC explained. “We were unhappy with our existing telecoms partner, as although they were great at sorting out our IT, we were having problems with the telephony side. As a result, we felt that we needed to work with a specialist telecoms supplier and leave the IT support to our existing partner to ensure we could get the best out of both.”

Alfonica were already providing mobile phones to ABC and were asked to give their advice as to what could be done to improve the current situation. After 

meeting with the Head of Unified Communications and Connectivity
at Alfonica, Simon Fogal, ABC were recommended the installation of a hosted phone system with Yealink
handsets for the 25+ users in ABC’s Edgware branch

Integrated site calls

With a dedicated Broadband connection installed at the same time as well as fax to email solution, the new system helped solve ABC’s problems. “Previously, we were having multiple problems with scheduling, handsets, accessing voicemail and transferring calls,” said Stuart. “With the new system, properly setup and installed all these issues disappeared.”

As a result of the improvement in service the Hendon branch wanted to update their phone system as well within a few months. Alfonica consultants quickly installed handsets for another 7 users and linked the two sites together.

This setup has enabled free site-to-site calls between the two offices as well as allowing for calls to be transferred internally between Edgware and Hendon.

Flexible and low capital cost

Since then Alfonica have worked closely with ABC Estates to ensure their growing group of companies can keep in touch with each other and their customers. This has involved connecting four more group companies to the same network, ensuring they can all enjoy the same cost savings and ease-of-use as well as improving their responsiveness to customers.

Stuart concluded, “Our decision to split support between telecoms and IT experts has been vindicated. Our current hosted phone system is now streets ahead of what we had previously. This has enabled us to save money on calls as well as improving customer service levels.

“The hosted element means that we don’t have to pay for expensive capital costs any time our requirements change. We just pay for what we use, and we can quickly and easily upscale our system to match changing business requirements.”