UK Contact Centre Slashes Call Costs Combining IP Gear and GSM Gateways
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Dial-A-Flight is part of The Lotus Group which was founded in 1985. More than 80% of the group's sales are generated by its Dial-A-Flight telephone sales and Internet service, which arranges independent travel and sells 650,000 flights a year. Lotus also offers luxurious skiing and golf packages under its SuperTravel banner.
The problem
Dial-A-Flight is in daily contact with travel consumers, almost
all of whom prefer to be contacted on their mobile phones.
Because of their ease-of-use and the resultant improved contactability,
mobile phones are becoming increasingly prevalent. Calls
to mobiles represented 60% of Dial-A-Flight’s total
monthly call charges. This high percentage is typical of
the travel and leisure industry where contact is made with
consumers almost entirely by mobile phone. This percentage
was increasing every month and Dial-A-Flight needed to find
a way to control it.
Because there are so many different tariffs which are influenced by call times, calls to other networks, text messages and free minutes, it is extremely difficult to gain an accurate comparison of suitable mobile tariffs.
Many organisations have applied cost control initiatives for their own employee mobiles. However, these initiatives do not solve the whole problem. It is the calls made outside of the company mobile group and across different mobile carriers that incur the biggest cost, and until recently were uncontrollable.
The solution
Dial-A-Flight approached IP Gear UK reseller and
communication solution provider IP Integration to analyze its
monthly billing information to identify those call costs that
could be significantly reduced.
IP Integration’s billing analysis software provided specific views of Dial-A-Flight landline and mobile call data. The software calculated the spread of calls by individual mobile carrier and inter-office calls, to offer the most cost-effective system solution. GSM Gateway technology provided the ability to intelligently monitor and manage the routing of calls to mobile phones and control costs. The technology ensured that a call from the gateway is charged as cost effectively as a mobile-to-mobile call. Two 16-port GSM Gateways were deployed in two of the Southern Dial-A-Flight contact centres primarily to cater for outbound traffic.
VoIP Gateway technology provides the ability to connect telephone calls between contact centres over either the public or private data circuits achieving high quality voice calls at zero cost. A IP Gear digital VoIP Gateway was installed into each of the four contact centres with a BT Business ADSL link into the public Internet. This provides free desk-to-desk calls, and calls from any of the contact centres are routed at zero cost to one of the two GSM Gateways.
IP Gear gateways act as the central pipeline in the system, transparently routing calls along the path of least cost. Seamlessly integrating into the existing infrastructure, these gateways provide the least disruptive means of migrating to advanced telephony technology.
The benefits
- Cost savings - routing landline-to-mobile calls through a GSM Gateway has saved Dial-A-Flight an average of £9k a month. A reduction of 65% on their monthly bill.
- Low cost of ownership and immediate savings with return on investment within five months
- Uncompromised voice Quality of Service (QoS)
- Least cost routing allows Dial-A-Flight to take advantage of the best pricing packages from all network providers.
- Gateways simply deployed across any existing telephony infrastructure with zero disruption
- No administration overhead
- Remote management and monitoring provided via a web browser interface
The results
“Calls between offices are now free
and their rising mobile costs have been slashed by 65% without
any additional administration requirement. This annual saving
equals more than £3m of additional ticket sales. The
fact that our users haven’t noticed any difference since
implementing this technology and its ability to be deployed
across an organisation regardless of the existing telephony
and network infrastructure with an ROI within five months is
the compelling business case and a fabulous endorsement for
investing in the gateways.”
Tony Griffiths
IT Services Director, Dial-A-Flight