Installation of a Horizon Hosted Telephone System at Hearing Direct
Hosted Telephone System needed at Hearing Direct is the world’s largest online provider of products for the hearing impaired, selling everything from hearing aid batteries to amplified mobile phones.
Reasons for change
Hearing Direct has undergone impressive growth since its inception and has plans for widespread global expansion. Director, Gary Hill, notes that
“Six years ago, we had four products and a website with no phone number on it. Now, we ship 600 to 700 orders a day across the globe.”
Responding to the global success and growth of the business, the decision was made to update their telecoms –
“As soon as it became apparent that we needed a 0800 number and a more sophisticated way of handling the volume of customers that we were generating, we began looking for a more comprehensive and sophisticated telephone system.”
Why Hosted?
“It was a ‘no-brainer’. Our entire business philosophy is Hosted. We have no servers of our own at all, anywhere. We have an employee that lives in South Africa and two or three that work from home. We didn’t want a whole collection of hardware that needed maintaining in our offices.”
The Hosted solution was ultimately chosen for its flexibility –
“We knew we were going to be moving pretty frequently as we grew. It was by every measure the right system for us to enable people to plug into a router anywhere on the planet to connect to our systems.”
Why Cavendish?
Gary explains that they wanted a supplier with good experience in delivering cloud-based solutions.
“We have been with Cavendish for quite a few years now, and they’ve always been very professional and very quick to react to any concerns or issues that we’ve had. In the rare instances where there have been problems, the speed of response has been great and the solution and resolution have always been quickly delivered. That’s why I feel comfortable in recommending Cavendish to others.”
Benefits to the business
Gary indicates that staff have benefited most from the ability to have multiple freephone numbers –
“We have a Freephone number in France, in Germany, in the UK and hopefully shortly in more locations. The ability to have all those pulled down to one number along with various hunt groups is great.”
Another benefit is the ability to transfer internally –
“I work from home and my extension number effectively means that I could just as well be sat in the office. It’s the type of functionality that suits our particular company structure and global expansion plans.”
