Hampshire housing association goes the extra mile with Gamma

Providing more than 20,000 homes and allied services in Hampshire and Surrey, and developing more than 300 new homes yearly, First Wessex takes pride in working closely with its residents and their communities. Telephone contact is key, especially an out of hours helpline which the organisation regards as mission critical.

As well as quality housing at affordable prices First Wessex also helps residents find affordable credit, get advice about money and even find ways into employment.

The Benefits

  • Improved resilience for mission critical helpline.
  • Substantial savings on line rental and call costs.
  • Premium business quality broadband at non-premium prices.
  • Total control over inbound call routing, improving customer service.
  • Enhanced continuity of service during contingencies.
  • Access to extensive online call and billing statistics.
  • One point of contact for everything.
  • Best value through use of PfH (Procurement for Housing) framework deal.

The Challenge

With a legacy telephone estate based on ISDN and analogue lines, First Wessex wanted communications between its various locations to operate in a more cohesive way so that all sites could work together more closely. Additionally, with a commitment to deliver best value for its residents, First Wessex wanted to get the most from its communications spend.

Resilience and reliability were priorities, not just for that all important helpline but also for the First Wessex call centre in Portsmouth and offices in Aldershot, Eastleigh and Gosport. Back-up and support from the supplier was crucial and any reported faults had to be dealt with promptly. At the same time there had to be a readily available and quick to implement divert strategy for emergencies when lines are down or staff are unable to get into work.

The Solution

Gamma transferred all of the First Wessex analogue and ISDN phone lines as part of a cost saving wholesale line rental (WLR) solution. First Wessex also moved all its calls over to a more competitive Gamma solution.

This was followed by the migration of all broadband connections to Gamma’s superfast alternative.

First Wessex also use Inbound to host incoming phone numbers in the cloud. This provides a much more flexible and reliable service and offers First Wessex complete control over how incoming phone numbers are routed.