Microsoft Business Voice enhances call efficiency for property services company

Before partnering with Virtuoso, Green Kite and Agents Army were using a VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system on desk phones and were operating solely from an office-based environment, restricting flexibility of workstyles. As the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged a sudden shift to remote working in 2020, Green Kite and Agents Army were forced to switch from desk phones to a softphones set-up on desktops and mobiles.

With 70% of Green Kite and Agents Army’s staff in call-based roles, this was a critical business function for them to maintain. Unfortunately, the hurried move to softphones revealed issues with not only the reliability of this technology, but also their IT support provider at the time. There were obvious flaws in customer service and response-times to urgent issues, as well as a lack of understanding of their business needs. This led to Green Kite and Agents Army’s decision to switch provider and begin working with Virtuoso.

“As we transferred to softphones we found that the reliability of the phone system worsened; we’d previously experienced a drop in service connectivity but this became more frequent and our current provider was less than helpful in resolving the ongoing issues.” Chris Gault (Associate Director of Operations)

Virtuoso worked with Green Kite and Agents Army to understand their business requirements, their reliability on telephony and their objectives for company-wide communication.

To resolve communication challenges, Virtuoso migrated Green Kite and Agents Army to Microsoft Teams, a secure and reliable collaboration platform that would enable their workforce to work on projects effortlessly from any location.

For their telephony, Green Kite and Agents Army needed a virtual telephone system that could be accessed from any device, whilst promising a reliable call connection and the ability to draw insights from these calls. After consultation from Virtuoso, Green Kite and Agents Army decided on Microsoft Business Voice as a solution; a cloud-based phone system with advanced features including call transfer and multi-level auto attendants.

With Microsoft Business Voice integrating flawlessly with Microsoft Teams, the team at Green Kite and Agents Army would be able to make and receive calls, as well as communicate and progress with projects from one universal easy-to-use business hub.

“We began using Microsoft Teams as our virtual office platform since working remotely and it has been great to bring all our services into one platform. The team have found having everything in one place is a great way to work and have commented on how easy the Microsoft Business Voice system was to pick up and learn. It’s extremely user-friendly!” Chris Gault (Associate Director of Operations)

Green Kite and Agents Army’s previous softphone system was a universal application and therefore not built to meet their unique requirements. When migrating to Microsoft Business Voice, Virtuoso defined various configuration settings to design a custom-built system for Green Kite and Agents Army. Functions such as call queues, a method of routing callers to specific people in an organisation, would enable Green Kite and Agents Army to have better response-rates and ultimately, happier customers.

“Virtuoso arranged demos with Microsoft Business Voice experts, investigated different options for requirements, and managed communications with our old provider as we moved away from them and over to Microsoft Business Voice.” Chris Gault (Associate Director of Operations)

The Microsoft Business Voice admin portal is another feature that gave Green Kite and Agents Army more control and visibility of their telecommunications, as customisable settings allowed for easy day-to-day management of call processes and schedules.

“Since migrating to Microsoft Business Voice we have a happy team who know they can rely on the stability of the system we use for our telephony. The call quality is consistently high and all of this in turn makes the operational and customer service side of our business much more reliable and of high quality. It has essentially allowed our teams to focus on how they support clients and not worry about what might go wrong with the phones.” Chris Gault (Associate Director of Operations)

As a Microsoft-Gold Partner, Virtuoso also worked with Green Kite and Agents Army to harness other Microsoft Cloud products that could further streamline workflows and enhance efficiency. By integrating Power BI with Microsoft Business Voice, Virtuoso supported Green Kite and Agents Army with creating native reports that demonstrate user activity and call behaviours. This has given the senior management at Green Kite and Agents Army better business visibility on call responses and employee performance and therefore, enabled more informed business decisions.

“Virtuoso were great during the move to Microsoft Business Voice. They have always shown an understanding of what we are trying to achieve and offer solutions to problems we didn’t even know were there. They are an extension of our business, rather than just a supplier, and were brilliant at making the move to Microsoft Business Voice a smooth transition, whilst ensuring that we understood what was going on and how the system worked.” Chris Gault (Associate Director of Operations)