DirectBuy Maximizes Productivity with the Best Business Phone System

Here’s How DirectBuy Maximizes Productivity with the Best Business Phone System – Case Study

Measuring call performance and empowering staff to work from home drive productivity for DirectBuy, a buyer’s club company that allows members to purchase items directly from vendors. Dale Sturgill, the contact center director, reiterated how the company maximized its productivity with the best business phone system.

Company Profile

DirectBuy is a members-only club founded in 1971 in Merrillville, Indiana, famous for offering various product categories. They work with the top brands everyone’s familiar, and grew up with. A member enjoys benefits such as access to unbelievable savings.

Choosing between a monthly fee of $44.99 or $24.99 per month paid yearly. The company connects its members with manufacturers and legitimate dealers directly, removing the retailers, making the products as cheap as a wholesale price.

Members also enjoy many other benefits such as concierge shopping, project coordination, in-home decorators, and designers. What distinguished DirectBuy from its competitors is its complete customer service. With the membership fee, customers are getting the full support of their members’ service teams.

DirectBuy products range from furniture, appliances, home improvement to electronics, accessories, and apparel. Services also include working with 150 designers, project coordination, delivery, and installation.

The company guarantee to provide services above and beyond customer’s expectations. Their customers have been satisfied with their services. Kevin and Annamarie Klippenstein claimed they’d achieved their dream kitchen because DirectBuy made it so affordable.

With all of the above, we can only imagine the number of staff DirectBuy has and the need for a smooth business phone system. It serves hundreds of thousands of members that the DirectBuy team needs to handle over 30,000 calls per month.

How Does a Business Phone System Affect DirectBuy Business?

With DirectBuy’s fast-paced, production-driven environment, creating customer-centric and empowered employees is necessary for the company to ensure that exceptional service is provided every time.

DirectBuy has several offices, including Merrillville and Canada, with a total staff of over six hundred. The company receives mostly inbound calls that need help, from placing orders to designing custom flooring or a cabin.

The heart of the company’s service and promises relies heavily on their business phone system. Switching to a better VOIP business phone system would make things a lot more convenient for the company and its employees, allowing them to work from home.

When Dale Sturgill joined the team in 2015, the business phone system’s decision was made shortly. After researching for a new provider, they found Nextiva to be the suitable VOIP phone system for the company.

What Makes Nextiva a Great Choice for Small Business VOIP Phone System?

Nextiva connects your phone system with business apps, AI, and automation on a single platform. Whether you run a small business or an enterprise, Nextiva makes it easy to connect teams and customers in one place.

It prides itself on a complete communications app for the business and powerful business apps for sales and service tasks. It got everything a company needs in a business VOIP system to grow and succeed.

Even the technical set-up and configuration are all designed with the user in mind. For example, the VOIP phone works with the desktop and mobile app to manage your sales process and conversation.

Nextiva Built-In Business Apps and Tools

• Sales Tool – If you always got leads slipping out the back door, Nextiva’s sales tool can help track all communications related to the deal, whether it’s a phone call, email, chat, or text.
• Service Tools – Combined with helpdesk tools, service tools offered by Nextiva will make teams more productive by providing visibility and information about the customers.
• Call Pop Up – Call Pop shows the caller details on your screen, so you’ll know customers even before you pick up the call.
• Automation – Employees can now answer questions, requests, and concerns faster than ever. Because Nextiva’s software can detect the subject related to the problem, it can provide real-time suggestions or solutions.
• Analytics – Hidden insights are allowing the company to make improved decisions. With analytics, a company can resolve issues faster and increase employee performance.
• Customer Journey – A company can improve customer satisfaction by understanding the customer journey from start to finish. With conversation analysis, the system can provide intelligent recommendations to staff.

Setting Up the Business Phone System

Switching to Nextiva was as smooth, praised Dale Sturgill. An onboarding team worked with the staff to make the switch after-hours that none of the customers were affected. Before switching, DirectBuy can only serve up to forty users at a time. But with Nextiva, they managed to serve over a hundred more customers.

The set-up could not be easier with the following steps:

1. The first couple of weeks of onboarding were dedicated to training and getting started. Nowadays, onboarding a new agent could take up to only one day because of its user-friendly features.
2. Aside from admin, user, and call center training, the team also received Nextiva Analytics training.
3. The account manager regularly trains the team if every new feature comes up and onboarding new team members.

Dale Sturgill was still the primary administrator of the account. A few employees have also been trained on using NextOS (voice) that efficiently completes call forwarding requests or change answering machine messaging.

Switching to Nextiva – A Win for DirectBuy!

Without a doubt, Nextiva is a win for DirectBuy. Here are the reasons why:

Nextiva Keeps Your Team Connected.

With a VOIP business phone system, the Nextiva app provides the flexibility DirectBuy needs to run the business smoothly around Canada and the United States. Even the remote users feel as though they are sitting right in the office using softphones connected directly to their laptops.

The customers don’t feel the difference, that they don’t have an idea if they are talking to someone in Merrillville or working from home or in any other different locations across the country.

Even when the weather is too severe that employees can’t come to the office, they will still run with employees easily working from home.

Nextiva made the teamwork efficient.

A VOIP phone system improves business efficiency by enhancing collaboration between team members. With everyone connected to the same network, it is not required to dial into a separate audio conference anymore. All kinds of calls can be done on a computer or the mobile app, which means all employees can participate in one call session.

Automation Provides Instant Gratification to Customers.

With intelligent automation, a business can create strong relationships with its customers. Automation helps the company say the right things at the right time. This keeps the conversation flowing with automatic check-ins and follow-ups.

Even if the employee is currently not available, the phone system would do its job and forward the call to the next person. From automated welcome messages, surveys, campaigns, Nextiva got it right for DirectBuy.

Contrary to common belief about automation, Nextiva’s intelligent automation does not lose the human touch, so it works well.

A VOIP That Has Amazing Customer Service.

What made Nextiva a great partner for DirectBuy is its customer service, which is always flexible. Nextiva even created a custom integration for DirectBuy’s workforce management company that enabled them to do more than they thought possible with the system.

Sturgill also emphasized how the interaction with the support and account management teams truly made the experience of working with Nextiva a bliss.

With exceptional customer service, the management feels confident that they can always rely on Nextiva to help with any issues, whether it’s simply answering questions or

With exceptional customer service, the management feels confident that they can always rely on Nextiva to help with any issues, whether it’s simply answering questions or training the team about the new features. Nextiva will undoubtedly continue to grow with DirectBuy through the years.

Receive Real-Time Analytics with the Right Business Phone System.

The analytics and reports supplied by Nextiva from the call systems are essential to how DirectBuy would take the subsequent necessary actions towards its goals.

Dale Sturgill described the combination of statistics and other reports from the call center and Nextiva as fantastic, as leads walk the floor while the admin dashboard tracks the call volume and queues.

This information can help analyze if the company needs to adjust its staffing needs. Plus, it’s real-time information that can be addressed immediately. This information is irreplaceable and vital to the company’s success.

Other features, including Advanced Call Recording, enables DirectBuy to listen to call recording. And shall there be anything that requires changing, they can quickly provide feedback to their agents? Quality analysis remains to be the key to ensuring a company is in the right direction.

As to how Dale Sturgill puts it, Nextiva has become the absolutely critical component of DirectBuy’s growth. He also added:

“There is no way that we would be where we are today without our relationship and the service that Nextiva brings to us. The interactions I have with the Support and Account Management teams are truly what makes the experience of working with Nextiva amazing. I know I can rely on Nextiva to help me through any issues, answer any questions, or train me on new features. It’s been a great experience, and I know that Nextiva will continue to grow with DirectBuy through the years.”

Key Takeaways

The best phone systems can help you:

• Keep your team connected
• Increase efficiency for those working at home
• Elevate customer experience
• Make the right decision for your business through real-time analytics and reporting

Call Flow Solutions proudly work with Nextiva. If you want to know the best phone system for your company, let’s discuss it. Otherwise, read more of our case studies here that show how a suitable VOIP phone system can improve businesses worldwide.