Business Need

From its ground breaking hatchery in the Midlands, the client leads the way in the production of day old chicks to egg producers across the UK.

TIC originally sold them a Panasonic telephone system which met all of the initial business requirements until the continued growth of the facility in 2013 led them to experience some communication challenges with their production staff working in the expansive hatchery.

  • The facility operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with different staffing shift patterns and the current system didn’t offer flexibility in routing calls beyond the traditional, day and night service ringing patterns. This lead to customer frustration when looking for out of hours support.
  • Concerns were expressed with regards to the health and safety of lone workers working in remote areas of the facility and how they could communicate in the event of an accident. The building’s architecture consisting of clean air rooms and refrigeration facilities prevented mobile phone coverage. The current system was unable to provide coverage for cordless phone users in this environment.
  • Getting messages to these staff was labour intensive involving people having to leave their desk and physically walk around the facility to deliver the message, hence indicating that productivity needed to be improved.

The Technical Solution

  • NEC SV8100 Configured With 10 x ISDN Channels, 40 x Digital Handsets, 11 x IP DECT Phones, with 8 x IP DECT Access Points, 16 Port Automated Attendant System and Unified Messaging.

The Benefits

  • The new system’s advanced inbound call routing capabilities ensured calls could be routed intelligently to either an automated answering service or member of staff dependent on the time of day, day of week etc. The NEC system allows multiple changes of incoming call routing automatically in any 24 hour period. This helped callers get their enquiries dealt with faster than ever before, regardless of what country they were ringing from.
  • The NEC DECT Base Stations were installed covering all internal and external aspects of the large site with seamless call coverage. Each base station is capable of supporting up to 12 simultaneous calls, so it provided all staff with the ability to take a call and maintain the conversation wherever they were in the facility, even when they were in the clean room environments. This enabled both internal and external callers to get their calls dealt with immediately, improving productivity and customer service.
  • THE NEC DECT Handsets installed were ruggedized for use in the demanding environments and provided the user with freedom, comfort and flexibility. Access to full system functionality made it easy to contact staff, hold and transfer calls etc. Inbuilt voicemail made the processing of messages quick and easy whilst on the move.
  • The health and safety concerns were addressed by implementing handsets that had both SOS alarming and man down capabilities. The SOS button when pressed alerted a predetermined number of staff either internal or external to the business and the man down facility with location detection helped support staff respond immediately to incidents.