Teaching Hospital

About the Customer

Catering for their millions of patients and colleagues is a big ask for any contact centre, and following a period of growth over recent years, the hospital’s previous legacy telephony system needed an upgrade to enable them to cope with the volume of ingoing and outgoing calls. The old system was also expensive, both in terms of maintenance required to keep it operational, but also in relation to call costs.

The Challenge

When dealing with communications relating to patient care, any outages could be catastrophic, so the new telephony system had to be reliable and efficient as a first priority. It also had to be flexible, cost-efficient and futureproof, ensuring that it could help them deal with whatever future challenges may lie in store.

The Solution

As an existing customer of Wavenet,* the hospital selected us to help. We were able to upgrade their legacy system to a new Mitel telephony solution, allowing them to effectively manage high volumes of ingoing and outgoing calls, along with call redirection services and an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to help callers get through to the right place.

To mitigate the risk of outages, the solution uses a diversely routed connection, so there is no single point of failure. If one circuit goes down, the system will fall back on others ensuring no interruption of service.

We also provide second line support, so that if they encounter a technical problem, our experts are ready and waiting to help them through it.

To ensure their contact centre solution remains futureproof, we are also working with them to switch them to a SIP service so that they are not impacted by the public switched telephony network (PSTN) switch off in 2025.

The Results

The new system allowed the hospital to achieve significant cost savings, as the cost of calls was reduced by around 90% compared to their previous solution. They also made further savings on the lack of maintenance required compared to the old system.

Hospital management and IT teams now have peace of mind, knowing that they do not have to worry about the 2025 PSTN switch off, and that their telephony system is robust enough to deal with not only the current volume of internal and external calls, but with room to expand should the need arise. They also have the comfort of knowing that Wavenet specialists are on call to help them address any technical issues or maintenance requirements as they arise.

The new system stood out particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, as colleagues were able to maintain effective communications when working remotely.

We take great pride in our partnership with (the hospital), delivering reliable, cost-efficient, and future-ready unified communications that plays a role in facilitating the life-saving work that they do. After working with (this customer) for around a decade, we've gotten to know their systems and their requirements. They treat us like part of the team and rely on us for regular advice and to help make sure they're getting the most of out of their investments.

Jeremy Slack

Field Sales Consultant at Wavenet

*The initial engagement was with Daisy, acquired by Wavenet in 2024.

If you’d like to find out more about how Wavenet could help your business with the areas covered in this case study, then get in touch at enquiries@wavenet.co.uk.