PERFORM BETTERCharter Community Housing Ltd (CCH) is a not for profit registered social landlord that provides quality housing and services to residents in the community.

Charter was formed from the Housing Department of Cherwell District Council following a large scale voluntary transfer of the Council’s housing stock in March 2004 and currently manages around 3500 properties in north Oxfordshire within the boundaries of the Cherwell district.

“ Right from the beginning of the project we were impressed with Voyager’s attitude. They took time to listen to us and work with us to design a solution that would meet our needs now and provide the framework for expansion in the future.” Gerry Hodge, Charter’s Corporate Services Manager

Contact Centre Solution

Charter Community Housing.

Case Study

Priding themselves on being customer-focussed, performance orientated and dedicated to the people they provide homes and services to. Charter Community Housing took the strategic decision to become part of the Sanctuary Housing Group in August 2007. Sanctuary is a nationwide housing group which manage over 70,000 homes across England and Scotland.

PERFORM BETTER

Voyager Networks and Phoenix Software were chosen

by Charter Community Housing in June 2007 to

provide the IT and Communications systems required

for Charter’s relocation to new purpose built premises

in Adderbury, Oxfordshire.

Charter Drivers for Change

As with most housing stock transfers, CCH needed a

complete IT solution to separate themselves from the

existing council systems and create a standalone network

at their new office site. By doing so, CCH were looking

to bring all of their operational bases onto a single site

with the objective of gaining greater efficiencies and

further improvements in service provision.

CCH were faced with migrating all of their existing IT

systems from their Bodicote office in Banbury to their

new site. The two main objectives of the project for

CCH were to:-

n Move to the new premises with the least

practical disruption to the organisation or

its tenants.

n Provide a flexible, scalable network allowing

Charter to expand and take advantage of

new IT technologies as they grow.

Having recently acquired CCH, an important element

for the Sanctuary Housing Group is to ensure that

service levels and procedures are standardised as they

acquire or merge with other housing associations. As

part of the Charter requirement, it was essential that

the entire network infrastructure and customer service

capabilities improved to ensure their tenants would

have the same, high levels of service that are operated

across the rest of the Sanctuary Group organisation.

Charter Summary of Requirements

Charter required a solution that provided a single

integrated voice and data network for use across the

entire organisation. The new system would need to be

installed in their new corporate office in Adderbury. As

well as the voice and data requirements, Charter also

required contact centre functionality for 5 customer

service representatives, which has since been

upgraded to 10 seats utilising a dedicated server.

“Right from the beginning of the project we were

impressed with Voyager’s attitude. They took time to

listen to us and work with us to design a solution that

would meet our needs now and provide the framework

for expansion in the future.”Said Gerry Hodge, Charter’s Corporate Services Manager and Project Manager for this project.

Case Study. Charter Community Housing | Contact Centre Solution

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“The system allows callers to be directed to the right people that can help them at the first point of contact which enables us to retain our high levels of customer satisfaction” comments Gerry.

Voyager designed its solution after consultation with

Charter’s ICT and customer services team and put

forward a Cisco Unified Communications solution,

with over 100 IP Phone users at their new site in

Adderbury. Voyager provided Charter with the

following components:-

n Cisco Local Area Network supporting 144 Users

n Cisco CallManager supporting over 100

Cisco IP Phones

n Cisco Unity Connection for voicemail

n 5 seat Cisco contact centre initially, recently

increased to 10 Seats

n Internet access and security

n Installation of PSTN connection to BT

n Installation of Windows 2003 & Citrix system

(Phoenix Software)

n Support and maintenance

n End user training

As part of the contact centre solution, customer service

representative now use the Cisco Agent Desktop

application to perform the customer interaction function.

Charter’s customer service representatives can now log

in, handle all calls presented to them, and perform all

contact center functions using this interface.

Having previously been involved with a number of other

housing stock transfer projects, Voyager outlined the

experience and expertise they had in delivering similar

solutions and were able to work alongside Charter to

design the best solution for them and their customers.

Gerry comments further “All of the Voyager

representatives that we dealt with took pride in their

work and their was a clear desire to ensure that the

solution they chose for us was the right one and that it

would be delivered on time and to budget. Even when

things got very technical, they took time to explain in a

language that we understood!”

The project was managed using the Prince II

methodology and Voyager took complete ownership

of all third parities, allowing Charter’s ICT team to

concentrate on other aspects of their business, safe in

the knowledge Voyager were delivering this project.

“The implementation was completed on time and in a

professional manner – the right degree of hand holding

and support was always available” commented Avril Burrows – Charter’s Customer Service Manager.

“Throughout the project, Voyager and Phoenix met

regularly with us to monitor and report on progress and

work through any issues that arose – at all stages of the

project we knew exactly where we were at, which in turn

allowed accurate budget monitoring and internal

reporting to the Management Board”. Said Gerry

Case Study | Contact Centre Solution

Charter Community Housing.

0870 170 9700www.voyager.net.uk

Case Study | Contact Centre Solution

Charter Community Housing

Voyager Networks Limited

Voyager House, Sir William Lyons Road, University of Warwick Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7EZ.

Phone: 0870 170 9700 Fax: 0870 170 9749 Email: info@voyager.net.uk W: www.voyager.net.uk

© Voyager Networks Limited. This document is the Intellectual Property of Voyager Networks Limited. Its contents should not be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior permission of Voyager. Copyright © 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco, Cisco IOS, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries.

VOY | 109366 | A

PR ‘08

Key Benefits of Voyager’s Solution

In many ways, the solution provided by Voyager

and Phoenix Software supports Charter’s values of

customer focus, quality service and dedication to

the people they serve. From a technology perspective,

Charter were looking to improve their network

performance and to create a more secure and stable

platform from which to grow their organisation on and

improve their service provision. The new solution now

means Charter’s customer transactions can be dealt

with quickly and effectively ensuring they achieve

their Key Performance targets for customer

service delivery.

Gerry comments “We now have the capacity and

ability to monitor and report on all aspects of a

customer’s front end experience when they contact

us. We can now accurately tell when our peak call

times are, the amount of call traffic, how long callers

have been waiting etc. All of this information we were

unable to access before and now this allows us to

review our service and pin-point areas where

enhancements to the service can be made”

“Internal configuration changes to the system are

easy and cost free to implement – no more calling

an engineer and waiting for hours – just unplug the

phone and move it!” Avril comments further.

By contacting staff in a single working environment

and giving them easier access to information, they

can provide more accurate information faster to their

tenants about payments, repairs or general information

about their homes. The following outlines some of

the capabilities that Charter now has:-

n Being able to call other locations as if they

are extension numbers

n Automatically updated directories accessible

from a handset

n Ability to hold conference calls easily with

remote staff

n Calls are answered quickly at a central

location and callers directed to the best

person to deal with their call first time

n Home and remote workers can operate as

though they are office based.

This will allow Charter’s ICT team to administer

the entire network more simply than the previous

solution through the deployment of a complete

Cisco solution.

“The solution that Voyager have provided has

enabled us to implement our Customer Service

Strategy introducing a system that allows callers

to be directed to our technical repairs hub or our

customer service centre for all general housing

management queries. The system allows callers to be

directed to the right people that can help them at the

first point of contact which enables us to retain our

high levels of customer satisfaction” comments Gerry.

Voyager Networks is one of the most established,

experienced and dynamic network integrators and is a

leader in the provision of integrated voice, video and data

networks services to large public and private organisations.

In partnership with its clients, Voyager has been delivering

innovative solutions since 1993. These include LAN and

WAN infrastructure, WAN and Internet connectivity,

convergence, security, network management,

maintenance and support services.

Voyager Networks is an entirely self resourced and supported

networking company with specialist facilities including

its own Network Operations Centre (NOC). Voyager offers

a comprehensive portfolio of service products designed

to complement the customers own skills and deliver a

complete High Performance Network Solution. Voyager’s

extensive in-house engineering capability underpins a

broad range of on-site and off-site maintenance services.

This enables Voyager to tailor any support solution to suit

the particular customer’s requirements.

Voyager has implemented a variety of solutions, many of which are pioneering in their sector. For more information on these projects please visit our website www.voyager.net.uk to view our latest case studies or call us on 0870 170 9700 to discuss your requirements.

“Helping organisations grow,

reduce cost and improve staff

productivity through advanced

communications technology”

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Voyager Networks helps organisations achieve growth, operational cost reduction and increased staff productivity through advanced communications technologies.

Voyager Networks has been delivering end-to-end ICT solutions to the social housing sector for over 6 years, for more information on other housing sector solutions please refer to our website.