NSL ensures agency can ‘talk translation’ seamlessly while saving money

The Customer

Surrey Translation Bureau (STB) is a triple-ISO certified and award-winning translation agency, with over 40 years of experience and approximately 500 native and qualified translators at its disposal, covering most languages worldwide.

The Challenge

STB’s previous telephony system was not user-friendly by any stretch of the imagination. While the incumbent had provided access to the management platform, they gave no training and requests for further support in using the system were ignored.

Furthermore, the monthly bills STB received seemed to be increasing gradually, with no guidance from the incumbent as to why costs were increasing. At the same time, other add-on solutions (such as removing the previous system and ongoing maintenance) were never fulfilled.

While the majority of correspondence with its massive translator team is performed via email, the Surrey team still require a solid telephony platform to remain contactable with clients and for general day-to-day operations, including sales, finance and other teams.

So, having become recently aware of the PSTN Switch-off in 2025, STB’s Director George Cooke, embarked on a mission to find a new supplier to deliver a future-proof communications solution that would be easy to use and transparent in its pricing.

Given his research, he also wanted to explore how a future-proof Unified Communications solution, could cut costs and also enable staff to take their office numbers on-the-go when working from home.

The Solution

Speaking to his IT Support partner, 8×8’s Unified Communications platform was recommended, and given that NSL delivered the IT Support business’ 8×8 system themselves, George was also advised to get in touch with the NSL team, rather than going direct.

After making contact, a platform demo was quickly organised, with George amazed at how simple it was to customise the system by setting opening and closing hours, managing ring groups and adding/removing users.

While the new 8×8 solution was certainly straightforward and seamless, transitioning from the legacy system was anything but. This wasn’t the fault of NSL nor STB, but an embittered incumbent that was reluctant to port the business’ numbers, delaying the process multiple times.

To ensure business continuity, NSL built the 8×8 platform in a staging environment, using temporary numbers that forwarded to STB’s existing contact numbers. This ensured lines didn’t fall silent during the back-and-forth with the incumbent.

Once the solution was deployed, it was apparent the audio quality wasn’t as high as it should have been. Therefore, NSL quickly identified the issue – firewall settings creating a duplicate audio signal that caused an echo – and worked with STB’s IT Support Provider to amend the firewall settings and quickly eliminate the issue.

The Results

Now, STB’s team can all take advantage of an easy-to-use communications platform that encompasses voice, video and messaging to provide the best experience for both sides of the conversation.

George has been able to deliver a reliable home-working strategy to enable colleagues to work from home several days of the week, while maintaining seamless communications continuity.