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At Portman Travel we are the largest UK
independent travel management company. We've been in business servicing a broad
spectrum of corporate customers for an excess of 50 years,
we transact over a million business trips per annum,
and we employee around 550 staff
in approximately 15 locations in the UK Island and Holland.
For every one pound spent in the form of travel fees our customers receive a five
pound benefit, that's a five hundred percent return on investment
Previously we had 6 separate systems, now we have the one
unified communication platform across the entire estate, making new users,
changes, DDI work groups so much more easier.
This can ensure we have the right people in the right place to match
our client requirements.
Moving to a unified communication platform has further enhanced our customer service proposition.
Prime example of this was during our latest volcanic activity
was bringing all of our available 550 staff resource into
into one place at one time,
reducing our call waiting times during the period of highest demand ever just
down to 3 seconds.
We wanted to deploy an office anywhere strategy
this enables our international customers to call Portman Travel for the cost
of a local call.
We chose ShoreTel because we wanted a partner that share our passion for
providing innovative and bspoke solutions. During the tender process,
ShoreTel were exceptional. Their support and understanding of our
business requirements were second to none. Now with the ShoreTel system
we're able to provide dedicated work groups and teams to our key clients, identify when
those calls are coming into the business, deal with the calls appropriately, and
then on the back of that using an artillery comsoft product, provide
to the client detailed call reports of their reports showing how we're
answering the call, turning calls around, average hold times, and giving them a lot more
more visibility of how we're dealing with their calls on a monthly, weekly, daily
basis.
The ShoreTel conference suite is a really powerful tool tool that we have high
aspirations in using, we use it a lot internally, but also where it is a brilliant tool
is when we have regular meetings with our external customers we are able to share desktops,
share applications, give them latest figures, graphs of how they spend, travel.
The fare orders is a document that the supervisors here can all see,
whereby
we are constantly checking all of our bookings
to maintain that we are getting the best fares
for our clients
and by looking at the document we can see
what airlines are being used by other teams,
therefore we can look to use those airlines as well
to improve the fares of the clients we have.
Where ShoreTel will play a vital part in terms of what we see
developing over the next few years in terms of corporate travel
and corporate travel planning
is one of the big things were looking after at the moment with several of our clients
is actual cost avoidance.
So customers are beginning to talk to us about, is there a potential of actually avoiding that
particular journey and can you provide tools and solutions for us
that would allow us to lead people on the global basis rather than actually make the journey.
So if we have the platform that enables us to deliver that technology to our customers
it will fit with the way we see the market moving forward.
Solar RA provider of unified communications solutions to business in the UK
we have about a 1,000 clients all of whom
rely on Solar for their voice and data needs
we very much try to be that partner as opposed to just a supplier
Solar's relationship with Portman has always been very consultative
we've sought to really understand
their needs and their clients needs and
put together a solution that will work.
In particular, their clients are corporate who need
very speedy responses. They're not people who want to hang around.
So making sure that the call is answered as quickly as possible,
Portman I believe their estimate is 3 rings, by the right person is essential.
As well as putting in work groups across the estate. We've used functionality like
follow me. so that the right person can answer the call regardless of where their working from.
By having a single unified communication systems not only are we
able to further
delight our customers, but at the same time reduce our costs and that ultimately keeps
us one step ahead of the competition.