Case study: RW Equine Vet

Founded by Reuben and Sarah Whittaker RW Equine Vet Ltd is a traditional family run practice that specialise in equine and alpaca veterinary services.

The practice and its reputation have been rapidly growing and prides itself on offering cutting edge diagnosis and treatment services using the latest equipment. RW Equine Vet can provide surgical care using its own in-house facilities and operates a mobile surgery.

RW Equine Vet Ltd’s requirements

• With the office being based in an adjacent building to Reuben and Sarah’s home, one requirement was to be able to provide services into that building which were currently be served by a single cordless telephone and WiFi for the computers, which was being fed from the house.
• Due to the growth in reputation the practice decided that they needed to offer a professional telephone service instead of solely using email contact, which had been working well. This would provide clients with more choices on how to contact them and would also free up more time for Reuben and avoid calls for appointments disturbing him during surgery.
• The practice wanted to implement a solution that would be able to automatically answer incoming calls and filter them by directing the caller to the correct department through a series of options. The most important aspect of this requirement was to provide an option for callers with an emergency to be put straight through to someone who could help.
• This facility would also need to be flexible enough to operate in a different way at different times of the day and out of normal office hours emergency calls would need to be transferred to the on-call vets mobile.
• For non-emergency calls the practice was keen to ensure that callers were not ignored and wanted there to be a queuing system so that during busy times the caller was offered the option to wait or leave a message.
• Finally, due to the dynamic nature of the business, it was important for the team to have control over the solution no matter where they were so that they could manage their incoming calls whatever the situation.
• Overall the practice wanted to improve its already exceptional customer service by taking the businesses telephony to the next level.

ITS’s Solution

Our Telecoms Consultants advised that the supply of a Panasonic NS Hybrid IP Telephony solution would be best suited to RW Equine Vet’s with it being installed in conjunction with Cloud based telephone lines and management services.

ITS initially project managed the installation of telephone services and high-speed broadband into the office working closely with BT Openreach. This provided the basis for our overall solution to be deployed.

• Panasonic NS700 Installation with SIP Trunks
  • ITS installed a Panasonic NS700 Hybrid solution providing connection to the outside world using VoIP based technology and providing users of the telephone system with fixed and cordless telephones enabling them to manage the incoming calls in a professional manner via hold and transfer facilities.
• SIP Trunk Telephone Lines:
  • SIP Trunks are telephone lines delivered over the internet, having laid the groundwork by providing an internet connection to the office the practice was able to adopt this technology taking advantage of low costs of rental and calls and the future piece of mind of knowing as the practice grows they can increase the number of telephone lines quickly and easily.
• SIP Trunk Call Manager:
  • STCM is a cloud-based service that enable RW Equine Vet Ltd to be in control of their business continuity by providing inbound call control.
  • Automated Answering and Attendant, call queuing, break out and divert options, and Disaster Recovery plans are just some of the features included with STCM.
  • In additional STCM offers a web-based portal and Smartphone Application that enables users to manage their system on the go, wherever they are.
• Music on Hold
  • The practice was also keen to have music played when callers were on hold, ITS were pleased to advise on this and the Panasonic telephone system and STCM includes the facility to play this music to callers when they are on hold.

Excellent, personal service. We decided to use ITS rather than go through BT to set up our business phone lines. BT were taking ages to answer the phone and you never get to speak to the same person which is very frustrating. ITS dealt with all BT communications on our behalf, came to see us in person to assess our needs and we had one person (Nigel) to communicate with throughout the process. Our phone lines were set up before our deadline and the ongoing support has been excellent.

Sarah Whittaker
RW Equine Vet Ltd