Barons of Farnborough - Case Study

Barons of Farnborough Ltd is one of the most successful BMW main dealers in the south, located in Farnborough, Hampshire. It sells new BMW and Mini motor cars as well as high quality approved used BMW vehicles. Offering the highest levels of service and expertise, its aim is to ensure that every customer’s purchasing and ownership experience is as enjoyable as possible.

In 2007, Barons commissioned a brand new state-of-the-art showroom costing several millions of pounds. Rocket were selected to provide the entire telephony infrastructure from exchange lines, data circuits and MPLS cloud through to the phones system and its applications.

No expense has been spared when it comes to the customer’s on site experience.

But what about the customer’s telephone experience?
When Barons approached Rocket, they were in a good position. Their old site would remain active as a while-you-wait service centre, which meant their old phone system would also stay put.

This gave Robert Shepherd, Dealer Principal, a blank canvas when it came to what phone system to install in the new showroom.

Understanding Barons telephone requirements
Before we started thinking about the new phone system, we spent a great deal of time at Barons old showroom looking at their previous phone system. We wanted to see who was using it, how often and why.

Robert explained that the phone is an integral part of their day to day business. As well as receiving calls from prospective customers and suppliers, they make a lot of outbound calls too in the form of service and MOT bookings and post sale follow up calls. They can’t not make the calls he told us because they not only have a responsibility to the customer, but to the manufacturer as well.

“They regularly call to check that our customer service handling is up to scratch. If we take too long to transfer a call or we miss a call altogether, it can really count against us,” he explained.

It soon became clear that although Baron’s existing telephone system was doing an adequate job, it simply didn’t have the features that would help them improve or even exceed their performance targets.

What Barons Wanted Most
There were a number of issues that Robert Shepherd really wanted the new phone system to address. As a manager, he wanted a way to measure call volumes and monitor call quality. He also wanted to make it easier for his sales executives to hit their sales targets while maintaining an excellent level of customer service.

Taking everything into account, Rocket chose the NEC Aspire for Baron’s new showroom.

Key Components Selected in Project

	Lines, data and MPLS Installation
	NEC Aspire ACD System
	Voicemail for all users
	Voice call recording
	Low cost phone calls
	MyCalls call management
	Integration with legacy CRM
	Business continuity

Managing the sales team activity

Greater Control
From a managerial perspective, the NEC Aspire had everything Barons wanted. A basic ACD system that would process incoming telephone calls on a first come first serve basis. Where required, the system would hold callers in a queue where they would be directed to the next available call centre agent.

What’s more, Robert would have access to real time and historic statistics (calls taken, average length of call, calls abandoned, etc) that would enable him to make decisions that would affect their overall showroom performance.

The MyCalls Call Centre real-time monitoring and logging from a wall board or PC enables Dealer Principal, Robert Shepherd to see at a glance how many calls are coming in and going out, how many calls are queuing and how many are being abandoned.

This allows him to see if employees were meeting their targets in real time, and take effective steps to address inefficiency across the business. Shift resources as the situation changes minute by minute. Proven to increase productivity.

In a busy office, managers don’t want to be reliant on IT support for the smallest thing. Up until recently, even changing a name in the phone directory required the services of an IT specialist. With NEC Aspire, however, although it’s a highly sophisticated it’s extremely easy to configure and change to suit your own needs.

Improved Quality Control
Robert specifically asked for call recording as he felt given that the manufacturers regularly conduct test calls, it was important for Barons to be able to use the calls to improve call and sales techniques. Manufacturer test calls monitor speed and efficiency of transfers between colleagues, something that the new system could handle brilliantly.

“After our new phone system was installed we noticed the operational and cost benefits almost immediately.”

Make Empowered Decisions
When Dealing With Customers What’s more, with digital handsets they have the freedom to make decisions that will affect customer service. If, for example, they are busy with customers and a call comes through, they can see who the call is from.

They have the option to divert the ringing call to another colleague whose phone status is also visible thanks to a unique system of LEDs. You can also pick up your colleague’s ringing phone without having to dash across the dealership.

This flexibility is critical when every incoming call could be a potential sale worth tens of thousands of pounds.

Greater Flexibility For Sales Personnel
As with most sales environments, Baron’s personnel don’t have dedicated desk space. They would be swapping desks from one day to the next. It was therefore important that the phone system provide staff with the ability to hot desk without losing any of their productivity.

This would need to include voicemail for each user with email integration. The NEC Aspire also brought flexibility to Barons. Thanks to NEC Aspire, Baron’s employees can change workstations as often as they like; hot desk phones allow them to log-in to their personal extension to retrieve voicemails plus make and answer calls for their personal DDI.