Clarkson Safety Services respond 50% faster with Vodafone One Net Business

Overview

• Clarkson Safety Services is an independent, fully accredited National Fire Safety Business. It designs, installs and maintains fire alarm systems for retailers like Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

• The company wanted to respond faster to customer calls and create a more mobile team of engineers.

• Upgrading to Vodafone One Net Business means Clarkson experts now respond to calls twice as fast as before.
  

  
  

Meet Clarkson Safety Services 

Founded in a Surrey shed in 1974 by a husband-and-wife team, Clarkson Safety Services is now one of the UK’s largest independent, fully accredited National Fire Safety Businesses.

Since then, it has supplied countless fire alarm systems to some of the largest UK retailers, including Tesco and Sainsbury’s. The latter is one of its first and most loyal customers, with 1,600 units now using Clarkson’s solutions.

In 2014, Clarkson became part of French firm DEF Network, allowing them to move to new offices and adapt DEF’s global ambitions of providing the best fire safety services for old and new customers alike.

The challenge 

No matter when a fire alarm goes off, a rapid response is needed. Neil Shrubsole, Clarkson Safety Services’ Managing Director, knows that his business can’t allow urgent calls to be answered late. That meant fixing Clarkson’s current call routing system was necessary.

Slow and unfit for purpose, it was costing the team vital minutes, but upgrading to a new phone system meeting all of Clarkson’s customer service expectations would’ve cost the company a fortune.

However, with DEF Network’s backing, Neil and his team were able to find a highly advanced solution at an affordable price, courtesy of Vodafone One Net Business.

The solution 

Upgrading to Vodafone One Net Business meant all 54 Clarkson employees now use a unified landline, mobile and desktop communications system. With features like advanced routing that automatically redirects calls from landlines to mobiles or voicemail, Neil and his team are more responsive, more mobile, and less tied to the Surrey head office than ever.

Neil can also rest assured that Clarkson is in good hands. “Turns out One Net Business doesn’t cost any more than having separate landlines and mobiles from two different providers. In fact, it’s less if you take out the cost of our call centre,” he says.

The benefits 

One Net Business guarantees Clarkson that must-have quick response time for fire alarms, and no missed calls, in addition to including brand-new smartphones. In Clarkson’s case, callers are directed straight to an on-call engineer – even outside of office hours, thanks to call routing.

“The customer will get to speak to the right person, first time. When they’re not available, they’ll get to speak to someone in the right department or through to the personal voicemail,” says Neil.

Thanks to this, Clarkson’s staff now investigate fire alarm reports 50% faster, reducing response time from 1 hour to 30 minutes.

Vodafone One Net Business safeguards calls to report fire alarms to Clarkson Safety Services, so Neil and his staff never need to worry about missing a call again. As an added bonus, they can finally provide customers with a consistent service anytime, anywhere.

With responsiveness sorted and DEF helping them out, Neil thinks the time has come for the business to grow even further.  

“We’ve ticked along nicely to date but it’s time to get out there. There is plenty of opportunity for us,” he concludes.