Lantern's call centre evolution

London, UK 17th June 2004

Lantern Recovery Specialists plc was founded in 1966 by Ray and Joe Coleman and during this time has grown to become one of the largest independent breakdown recovery operators in the UK. From the smallest car to the biggest lorry, Lantern will recover the vehicle from anywhere within the UK and most of Europe and store it, if required, at one of their seven depots. Calls come in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to a centralised call centre located at their new headquarters in Potters Bar. With the move to new premises, and the increase in demand, Lantern have invested a large amount of money to upgrade their intensive control room and equip it with the latest technology to enable a quick and efficient service from the moment a call is
received and dispatched.

Their previous telephone system was unable to cope with the demands, and with an unpredictable level of calls arriving at different times of day, Lantern needed a system that could not only distribute the calls efficiently but also deliver real time and historical statistics to improve the planning of staffing levels. After reviewing many different systems, Lantern chose a Telrad Connegy IS128 supplied by London based Corporate Business Telecoms. "Out of all the systems demonstrated, the Telrad was the most impressive looking, and had the majority of features on our wish list as standard" said Cathie Chapman, H R Manager of Lantern Recovery. "We were looking for demonstrable ability, stylish in design but ultimately a system robust enough to cope with the future expansion plans at the right price."

Corporate provisioned digital subscriber lines (DSL) to all seven of Lanterns sites and created a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for secure voice and data. A 16 port Tvse IP Server was installed at Potters Bar to provide Voice over IP capability between the sites whilst also providing users with access to the inbuilt applications server for browser based address
book dialing, call forward programming and lost call list. "The call forwarding feature is especially useful" said Peter Crosby at Corporate Telecom. "Because you can access the server from any browser, if you leave and forget to divert your phone, you can enable it from wherever you are."

Their Hertford depot and a new 2.6 acre site at South Mimms, recently acquired from the AA, were fitted with Helix gateways enabling the connection of digital phones and analogue trunk modules, the latter allowing Lantern to retain certain telephone numbers that could not be ported across the BT exchange. The other depots were fitted with Avanti 3015 IP phones connected directly into ADSL routers. "We chose the Tvse IP Server solution because it runs a Linux based operating system and hence is incredibly stable and reliable" continued Peter “For a business such as Lantern that relies so heavily on a phone system, it is critical that the voice network is supported at all times. At peak times inbound calls can overflow to other depots allowing the call centre to continue operating at its target levels by bringing in agents from remote locations. DSLs are a cost effective way of connecting branches and because the digital phones connected to the Helix gateways and the IP phones connected to the ADSL routers are proprietary, the whole system operates as if in one building”

Callview Software was installed to complement the inbuilt Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) and the provision of wallboards provided agents and supervisors with not only real time statistics on calls, but also identification of callers by screen popping database records. Centralised voicemail was provided by an emaGEN unified messaging platform installed at the headquarters which can provide every user across the network with e mails, faxes and voicemails to their desktop. Messages on hold rather than just music has become very popular with our clients" said Peter. "We work with them on a script; help them select the voice-over artist and music then download the WAV file onto the emaGEN from our offices. No additional equipment is required and they can change the messages whenever they want."

Finally a digital call recorder was installed to sit in the background recording every call. Predominately used for training purposes, the recording index can be accessed then specific calls played back through the PC. "The new Telrad Connegy system has allowed us to organize the control room so that maximum benefit can be gained in terms of efficiency to
our customers” commented Cathie. “We’re not only hitting our time to answer targets now, but reviewing whether we should bring them down further."

Benefits:

• Efficient distribution of calls providing their customers with a quicker response, with the ability to overflow calls to the other depots.
• All sites linked together to form a seamless network for voice and data. Every user has the same functionality across all seven sites.
• Centralised Unified Messaging.
• Real time call centre statistics provided via physical and screen based agent wall boards allowing efficient planning of staffing levels.
• Messaging on hold to provide useful and relevant information to their customers whilst queuing or being transferred.
• All calls are recorded to improve agent training

For more information visit www.corporategroup.co.uk or www.lrs.uk.com 

About Corporate Business Telecoms

Corporate Business Telecoms Ltd is located close to the Euston Road in London and provide voice and data solutions across the UK.

Contact: Peter Crosby (0207) 503 3004

About Lantern Recovery Specialists plc

Lantern Recovery Specialists plc was founded in 1966 by Ray and Joe Coleman and during this time has grown to become one of the largest independent breakdown recovery operators in the UK.