LIPCO Business empowers staff to work remotely with Telviva
“There’s one word that comes to mind when describing Telviva: Ease. How easy it was for us to get onboarded with Telviva; right from the way they guided us through the entire process, the exceptional technicians that came out to get us started, and through to the high level of customer service we get today – it’s always a matter of ease,”
Fanie Vos
National Executive: Operations at LIPCO Business
Customer: LAW FOR ALL/ LIPCO Business
Industry: Financial services/ Legal insurance
Background
LAW FOR ALL is a registered financial services provider that offers legal insurance in the South African market. In line with local financial sector regulation, the company was divided between LIPCO Business, which sells the policies, and LIPCO Group which services policyholders.
While initially sharing infrastructure with its sister company, LIPCO Business saw the requirement for their own business communications system to meet the needs of their employees. This includes the admin staff who manage company operations, travelling salespeople making direct sales at public sector organisations, and a contact centre responsible for carrying out outbound sales campaigns.
The company wanted to move away from traditional on-premise PBX and contact centre equipment, and into the cloud, with a solution that addressed their needs and was cost effective. LIPCO Business assessed multiple vendors to find the right solution: many were not able to meet all their requirements, and the few that did were costly. In 2020, they were introduced to Telviva by their IT services provider, and found that Telviva One and Telvia Omni products, and the agility and scalability they offered, matched their requirements.
Access from anywhere, on any device
Apart from providing staff with the best possible tools in order to enable them to work efficiently, LIPCO Business wanted to ensure communications continuity in case of any disruption to normal business operations. This was made possible with Telviva One being available through fixed IP deskphones, a web browser on laptops or desktops, and through a softphone application for mobile, as well as the extended contact centre functionality through QueueMetrics.
Starting in November 2020, it took just over a month from the start of the engagement with Telviva to having the LIPCO Business head office as well as the company’s contact centre in KwaZulu-Natal fully migrated and operational. It was then decided to move the rest of the company’s countrywide offices onto Telviva, and this was completed within another month. This includes offices located in Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, East London, Johannesburg, Nelspruit, Potchefstroom and Pretoria.
The switch also simplified the management of communications for travelling salespeople: with the easy-to-use softphone mobile app allowing for the making and receiving of traditional calls, and integration with contact books, the company just had to ensure that employees’ phones had the required amount of data. This ease of use saw rapid uptake by the company’s direct sales teams. On the other hand, functionality such as cloud-based regulatory compliant call recordings prove vital for the company’s contact centre operations.
Business communications resilience
The primary focus for LIPCO Business was not about reducing costs of telephony, but about ensuring they were not spending unnecessarily on communications costs. As a sales organisation, the company remains highly dependent on traditional voice calls, be it for internal communications between employees, by the contact centre to drive outbound sales campaigns, or to manage and schedule bookings for direct salespeople who are on the road most workdays.
Rather, the focus was on the functionality of the services and products on offer and the ease of use, how accessible these services are, and as to whether it could help improve efficiency in business communications. This was critical as the company was negatively impacted during the Level 5 lockdown in 2020, when it was not able to continue with contact centre operations due to the previous solution being an on-premise one.
The scenario is vastly different today: despite ongoing national lockdowns restrictions of various severity, as well as the recent unrest in KwaZulu-Natal affecting businesses, the company’s contact centre staff in the province were able to continue with their work as usual. Despite not being able to go to the office premises for a week and a half, there was no disruption to sales. This is because employees were empowered to work from home by being allowed to take their laptops with them, and continue working using Telviva’s software.
As employees would have to use their own internet connection, there were initial concerns as to how the service would perform, given that the connectivity types and line speeds available to the various employees was unknown. These concerns were unfounded however, as there proved to be no severe degradation in the quality of calls for the employees working remotely.
“I have introduced Telviva to several businesses, and highly recommend them to other businesses out there. The level of support we have received has been exceptional and we have skilled experts who assist us in ensuring reliable communications operations. We have had some unique requirements, and we appreciate the time that the Telviva team takes to better understand the challenges we face, and to come up with innovative solutions to address these,” says Fanie Vos, National Executive: Operations at LIPCO Business.
