Clients such as The Curtain Room, which provides quality hand-made curtains, roman blinds and interiors for customers across North Yorkshire, are typical of early adopters of Hosted Communications. As a new small business, The Curtain Room sees the relationships it forges with customers as vitally important to its continued success. Its approach is to take time to understand clients’ requirements while avoiding the ‘hard sell’ approach.
“We work in a very competitive market and we have found our niche by offering a great product backed by a much higher level of customer service,” explains Founder and Design Principal Melanie Casling. In fact, given that much of its contact with customers takes place over the telephone, the manner in which calls into the business are handled is something The Curtain Room was keen to get right from the outset in order to provide a good customer experience.
“It is important for our customers to talk to a local firm and to speak to the right person in our company when they need to,” explains Casling, “Good communications is really a priority for us.” To help improve its processes, The Curtain Room worked with TeleWare Hosted Communications to deliver several improvements.
Work is typically carried out in the company’s studio near York but staff sometimes work from home or may be found visiting a client. Given the dynamics of the situation and their flexible approach to work, ensuring that all calls are answered promptly in order to maintain a high level of customer service is particularly important.
Using the Find Me – Follow Me feature, one of many call handling options supported by the TeleWare service, incoming calls are automatically routed through to a studio, home or staff mobile phone, irrespective of which of the range of numbers for The Curtain Room was dialled. On answering each call, a ‘whisper announcement’ informs staff of the location of the caller based on the number called. “It is very rare for customers of The Curtain Room to find themselves talking to voicemail,” explains Casling.
TeleWare was able to provide multiple local telephone numbers directed to a single number for The Curtain Room, enabling the company to promote itself in different geographic areas with a local number for each area.
“The quality and availability of the TeleWare service, without our having to understand the technology, is ideal,” explains Casling while fixed per seat costs of the service and detailed billing allows the firm to accurately monitor its communications costs. The combination of multiple geographic numbers and Find Me – Follow Me call routing has helped The Curtain Room maintain its excellent reputation and allows its staff to better serve customers.
“Communication technologies that previously were only financially viable for larger enterprises are now a practical option for smaller firms using a hosted model,” explains TeleWare Marketing Director, Lesley Hansen, “Customers like The Curtain Room are typical of forward thinking firms that are using our innovative systems to improve customer service and allow staff more flexibility to work remotely.”