NSL provides The Lowry with comprehensive and efficient Contact Centre solution

The Customer

The Lowry presents audiences with a diverse programme of theatre, opera, musicals, dance, music, comedy, and visual arts, as well as events and activities to expand the horizons of the local community.

The Challenge

The Lowry’s previous phone system, an on-premise Avaya platform that was ISDN based was coming to its end of life. And Darren Mullin (The Lowry’s Head of IT) knew he needed a cloud-based phone system to futureproof the arts centre’s communications for its 328 employees and 500+ annual volunteers.

Not only supporting the arts centre’s three theatres, multiple galleries, conference spaces, gift shop, as well as numerous bars and restaurants, the phone system was also used by QuayTickets. A separate Box Office company that serves The Lowry, as well as numerous other performance spaces across the UK.

Not long after starting to explore new solutions the ISDN lines connecting calls to the AVAYA system experienced a major outage, which significantly impacted Quaytickets’ sales. Even after the outage was ‘resolved’ minor issues appeared for weeks afterwards and the reduced support of the ISDN network pushed Darren to find a new solution sooner rather than later.

“The old system relied on legacy systems that, if failed, could not easily be repaired or replaced.” Darren Mullin – Head of IT, The Lowry

The Solution

Darren had quickly narrowed his choices down to 8×8 and a similarly placed market leader, but in his initial conversations with the other solution architects, red flags started to appear. Too many questions weren’t being answered in meetings, with only a “we’ll get back to you on that” in response, and the team was reluctant to give a final price.

NSL was then recommended to The Lowry by an industry partner company, who had worked with NSL previously on their 8×8 system, inspiring The Lowry to make contact. The team quickly grasped The Lowry’s needs; a comprehensive, omnichannel Contact Centre solution that could integrate with its Workforce Management platform, Verint.

This would enable managers to integrate staff working times into the calling platform, enabling the business to efficiently accommodate the temporary staff it, and Quaytickets, employed during peak times. Not only would this deliver simple timetabling, but seamless capacity planning too, empowering the box offices to leverage historical analytics and Big Data to automatically forecast demand and required staffing.

Furthermore, NSL’s 8×8 deployment would enable the call centres to take advantage of its rich reporting capabilities, providing clear visibility into call demand, using visual tools like spider diagrams to scrutinise complex metrics, in turn identifying bottlenecks and accurately rebill customers that were leasing spaces within The Lowry.

Looking past the main delivery of the Contact Centre solution, NSL also explored periphery comms systems, delivering a like-for-like calling experience for all other areas of the business, as well as flagging the need to replace the emergency lines/alarms in The Lowry’s six lifts.

The Results

Not only has The Lowry’s cloud-based 8×8 system enabled a more efficient contact centre across the arts centre, and the other businesses that use the system, but its staff are now empowered to work from home and take more control over their work/ life balance.

Plus, NSL’s free onboarding, training, and deployment has enabled The Lowry to save approximately £60,000 over the life of the contract, compared to the alternatives presented. NSL’s ISDN replacement for The Lowry’s lifts saved over £20,000 compared to the lift manufacturer’s alternative. Ongoing support was also dramatically cheaper, given that the comparative quote from another supplier estimated £20,000 per year for its support services!

Now, with the solution in place and already delivering significant benefits, The Lowry is already looking to incorporate more channels into its 8×8 platform, including webchat, social media, and email. As well as adopt Skills-based Routing and PCI-compliant card transactions to find new efficiencies and improve the customer experience even more.