Samsung and Avandda create innovative solution for major retailer

Samsung have been working very closely with their accredited retailer Avandda to create a perfect solution for Lakeland – the home of creative kitchenware.

The Challenge

Avandda first encountered Lakeland in 2008. Their customer service team – based in the Windermere head office - was served by an Avaya Index switch which was nearing end of life. Lakeland’s challenge was two fold:

• Decide whether to replace the switch with the next generation Avaya product, using the same supplier or to use a different approach.
• Find a telephony solution that provided the required functionality at a competitive cost.

Any solution needed to cater not only for the customer services team, but also the telephony for the whole of the head office split across 2 sites and incorporating offices, a flagship store and café in Windermere and a warehousing and distribution centre in Kendal.

Finally, there was a large and ever growing estate of retail stores to consider - reaching from Aberdeen to Truro – telephony for new stores and a rolling programme of support and potential migrations for refurbished stores.

The Opportunity

The manufacturer’s end of life declaration for the Index was viewed as an opportunity for a critical review of the company’s telephony as a whole. Samsung and Avandda spent considerable time specifying the optimum business solution in partnership with the Lakeland project team ensuring the proposed solution met every aspect of the specified needs.

There was a great opportunity to reduce significantly the initial expenditure on the solution as well as ongoing maintenance. Throughout the project, opportunities were identified and taken to rationalise the telephony provision for the company and reduce duplication of expenditure across sites.

The Solution

Together, Avandda and Samsung put in place the following solution

• VoIP telephony between Windermere and Kendal sites including voice mail to email technology to enable directors and managers to receive voicemails on their mobile devices
• A thorough review and confidence check on the existing DECT phone provision at the Kendal site
• New wireless mobile phone system for the entire Windermere site, including for the first time the store, café and car park attendants. This included internal and external wireless access points all round the site
• Café pager solution to enable shoppers in store to book a table and continue browsing whilst they wait for the table to be ready
• Call centre ACD solution allowing for “hot desking” agents to take calls in 2 ACD groups
• Configurable supervisor view of activity in both groups by status or agent
• An “inbuilt” call recording solution for specified areas of the team, increasing training, coaching and improvement purposes
• Configurable wall board visibility of KPIs on both call groups
• Comprehensive and customisable call centre reporting
• Disaster recovery provision in the form of mirror systems on two sites

The Outcome

The ease of communication between all teams involved ensured the project ran to time and budget.  Expert training organised by Avandda for the Lakeland teams ensured a smooth transition for users between telephone systems.  This in turn ensured smooth and incident free operation throughout Lakeland’s peak trading period.

Samsung and Avandda continue to develop the system in response to business needs – particularly in retail as expansion continues - and in partnership with the Lakeland teams.