COMMUNICATIONS 33
SALLY HAIR AND BEAUTY GIVES TELEPHONY SYSTEM A ‘MAKEOVER’
S
ally Hair and Beauty (Sally Beauty) has implemented cloud telephony systems from ContactWorld to improve
customer service levels. Sally Beauty operates 290 UK-based retail
stores. But its existing telephony hardware was not fl exible enough toprovide an effective tool to better serve customers. “The old system was problematic and did not support the growth of the company,” said Barry Katz, central operations controller for Sally Beauty UK & Ireland. “Customers were not getting through and were often being dropped off as we could not handle more than fi ve calls at any one time.” “Added to this, since we only had one line to deal with all calls, customers were ending up in a queue having to compete with calls from store workers. So for example, if the till system went down across
different modules to build a call plan that will handle its customers’ calls effectively. “We needed a system that was sophisticated enough to recognise and respond to area codes, but which was easy for customers to use,” explained Katz. “ContactWorld offers us all of this, acting like a virtual help desk for our customers. “In addition, a message service enables us
our stores we would suddenly be inundated with internal calls – and we simply couldn’t handle any customer calls.” After thoroughly exploring a range of
telephony systems, including on-premise and cloud-based solutions, Katz was selected ContactWorld from NewVoiceMedia, a cloud-based telephony solution that provides links and call plan intelligence between the caller and an agent. ContactWorld allows Sally Beauty to select from a variety of
UNIQLO BUILDS OUT EUROPEAN PRESENCE
Uniqlo, the Japanese fashion brand, needed an IT partner to help put in place a European network which matched its ambitions to expand into the region. NTT Europe provided fully managed infrastructure and systems and was fully involved in the physical construction stage of the fl agship store in Paris, Uniqlo’s European HQ. This included installing low voltage infrastructure and wiring to help deliver telephony and offi ce infrastructure systems, as well as an internet protocol (IP) infrastructure, connecting instore monitoring screens and security cameras. It provided a full communications infrastructure, including Wi-Fi,
an uninterruptable power supply (UPS), IP service and fi rewalls for the 400 staff based at the Paris headquarters. To support all this, and maintain network communication with other shops in Europe and HQ in Japan, Uniqlo makes use of NTT’s datacentre in Paris. In the UK, NTT delivered infrastructure services for all of
Uniqlo’s shops and offi ces and has been involved, following the success of its work in Paris, in the Moscow fl agship store construction.
JULY/AUGUST 2011 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
to quickly circulate information to staff. If the till system were to crash today, then instead of being overwhelmed by internal calls, we would simply issue a short pre-recorded message to all stores.” With ContactWorld Sally Beauty has
been able to signifi cantly improve effi ciency and reduce the number of lost calls by 50%. “ContactWorld now seamlessly manages all incoming calls from customers as well as staff,” added Katz.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40