Denplan creates mobile

platform for healthy growth Vodafone’s robust communications

infrastructure and strategic vision help Denplan deliver national healthcare

Vodafone Power to you

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I’ve been involved in similar projects in the past where you start with one guy and end with another. That always causes stress. Not here. The Vodafone guys who started the project were the guys that finished it. They knew the whole project.

Steve Marwick, IT Services Manager, Denplan

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Vodafone UK Healthcare

Denplan is the UK’s leading dental payment plan specialist. With their

unique and comprehensive support services, Denplan have been looking

after dentists and their patients for over 27 years. 

As the only consumer-facing brand in the payment plan market theirs’

is one of the most recognised names in dental healthcare among

UK consumers.

Challenge• Improve customer service through

upgrade to an ageing and unwieldy contact centre

• Create a standard set of key performance indicators across the contact centre

• Enable business units within head office to quickly create or disband new working groups

• Establish a partnership with one supplier across fixed and mobile

Solution• Upgrade the contact centre with Avaya PBX

and ISDN circuits and establish KPIs

• Involve all business units in Vodafone’s Better Ways of Working, helping plan future strategy

Results• Delivers an improved customer experience

from the contact centre, and provides a platform on which to introduce new features in the future

• Establishes, for the first time, a set of key performance indicators for the contact centre

• IP network makes it quicker and easier to set up new working groups at head office, creating greater flexibility

• Creates a deeper partnership with one supplier across fixed and mobile, reducing management costs and improving strategic planning

© October 2014. Vodafone Limited. Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2FN. Registered in England No. 1471587

For more information, get in touch with your Vodafone account manager or call us on 0845 894 2730(Standard charges apply)

““ We want to keep this close relationship going. We have a review of our mobile strategy coming up, and there will be an upgrade down the line. For me, technology has to support the business.

Steve Marwick, IT Services Manager, Denplan

ChallengeBuilding a brand

There are around 1.7 million people in the UK currently managing their dental bills through a Denplan payment plan. More than 6,500 dentists rely on Denplan services.

“We’re the only dental payment plan specialist with a recognised consumer brand,” says Steve Marwick, IT Services Manager at Denplan. “We want to use technology to provide a level of service better than anything available on the market.”

The business was acquired by Simplyhealth in 2011. Steve says this hasn’t affected the autonomy of the Denplan business, but has provided access to a wider knowledge pool. “We’d been looking at upgrading our contact centre infrastructure, as chance would have it, Simplyhealth were also looking for an upgrade. We already have our mobile business with Vodafone, but the Simplyhealth relationship gave us better access.”

Denplan runs one 200-seat contact centre at its base in Winchester. It fulfils a number of roles. “It’s basically three call centres in one,” says Steve, “one for dentists, one for patients, and one for our corporate business.”

The contact centre faced a number of issues. Firstly, the infrastructure, though functional, was aging and unwieldy. While it could support voice and email, there was no way it could handle chat, social media or video. Agents were hampered by being unable to view caller history. Also, there were no standard performance measurements.

“Making any changes would be way more complex than it needed to be,” says Steve. “Teams had grown organically. Each department had developed its own ways of working. For instance, there was no agreed policy on voicemails, or call answering times or call length.”

SolutionInvolving the whole business

Steve had initially viewed this as an IT project: “Vodafone quickly made me realise we needed to involve the whole Denplan business. They were able to rethink our contact centres from the ground up.”

Vodafone has created a modern contact centre platform capable of supporting additional features in the future. “More than that, they’ve helped us create a standard set of rules across the entire operation. We now have a standard corporate greeting and clear expectations of call length and waiting times.”

In the near future Steve hopes to add screen sharing, caller history, Instant Messenger and collaboration tools. These features will improve customer service and allow Denplan to market its services better: “We know the capabilities of the system, and hope to add more advanced features very soon.”

BenefitsConsistent service, fast to respond

The project benefitted from a great level of continuity from Vodafone: “I’ve been involved in similar projects in the past where you start with one guy and end with another. That always causes stress. Not here. The Vodafone guys who started the project were the guys that finished it. They knew the whole project,” says Steve.

He says the benefit has been felt in the broader Denplan business: “Under the previous system, as it wasn’t VoIP, any time we wanted to move staff around in the main office we’d have to do loads of work with switches. Now, with softphones, we just log out the user from one desk and log them in at a new phone. It means the business can put teams together faster to work on new projects.”

Business units across Denplan have embraced Vodafone’s Better Ways of Working, continues Steve: “As a team, we’ve been to the Vodafone offices in Newbury and Stoke to see it in action. All departments recognise elements that could be applied to their work. It’s a big cultural change for us, but there is an appetite for this.

"We want to keep this close relationship going. We have a review of our mobile strategy coming up, and there will be an upgrade down the line. For me, technology has to support the business.”