Dickies - A Complete Communications System

Company Name: Williamson Dickie Europe Ltd
Business Sector: Workwear Manufacturer
Requirement: Contact Centre 
Solution: Unified Communications

Dickies’ European head office is in Midsomer Norton, near Bath - a short distance from its distribution centre, which needed better communications.

“Dickies is one of our longest-standing customers,” explains William Wood, Senior Account Manager at Marlin.

“The challenges they faced when we first met them and the challenges along the way have changed as the business has grown.

When we first signed them up as a customer, they agreed a five-year contract with us to provide a phone system with maintenance and support, along with all lines and calls.”

“We put in a multicell-DECT cordless solution, which is part of their overall phone system – a UC (Unified Communications) platform,” explains Will.

“The UC platform spans the two sites and they’re linked via a 100Mb circuit. The IT Manager can get up from their desk with his cordless phone, walk three hundred yards down the road into the other office and his cordless phone will pick up a local sales station. He or she will remain accessible to anyone who wants to get hold of him.

“We have helped to consolidate all of the customer services across all of Dickies’ sites in Europe into this one contact centre.

It was massively lacking in technology but now it’s a multilingual facility so as a call comes in, dependent on the country of origin, it will route through to whoever is capable of speaking in that language.

It ensures that the call is delivered through to the right agent, first time. The contact centre can also analyse statistics via a wall board.”

Dickies believes they now have the perfect call centre solution.

Clive says: “We’re very sales-orientated so it is extremely important that our service desk is up and running the whole time. We wanted something that we could understand, that was easy to manage and that gave us the information required.

A call centre needs to be able to look at call logging and statistics. We couldn’t do that with our old provider but now we can. “The implementation went very smoothly; it’s an easily-managed system and our service team can see the number of calls that are coming in, the number in a queue, how many calls they have made that day - you name it.

It’s an incentive for our staff. If they can see how well they are doing it keeps them motivated.

With our original system, it was overly complicated. If you added a new number or extension, it took a lot of programming work, you had to get somebody in to do it whereas now we can manage the system ourselves.

“We only get in touch with Marlin if it’s something more serious. You can get the occasional error on a system – a board that dies or something like that – but the response time is always good.

If there are any software problems, they can sign in, look at the system, reboot it and amend things remotely so we never have to wait.”

The relationship we’ve had with Dickies since 2001 shows the real difference that Marlin can make as a trusted partner.

“There are many benefits that we have provided,” he emphasises. “largely around efficiency gains for the contact centre.

The technology means it doesn’t have to employ an excessive number of staff.

When we put the system in it was very complex. We were doing things that were at the cutting edge of technology at that time and then as new versions of the system came out we’ve implemented them straight away so that they can enjoy the benefits of the latest in unified communications.”

He adds: “Dickies came to us because they were looking for a phone system. Now we also provide their mobile phones, internet connections, lines, calls, maintenance and support: it’s a complete solution.

The First Five Years

At the end of their first five years with us, they were so happy with the job we’d done that they recommitted for a further five years.

We have given them two free upgrades in exchange for that commitment and they didn’t need to find capital expenditure. They kept all their existing handsets, and at the end of that ten years, they recommitted for another five years and now a further four.”

The Future

Dickies clearly values the interaction it has with Marlin.

“We discuss which possibilities we have got and try to improve things,” comments Clive.

“I’m considering introducing some SIP trunks and replacing our ISDN lines to save money and they have been very helpful with that. We’ve also just upgraded our intranet connection.

Marlin supplies a very good product and gives you options as well. They’re not overly priced and they’re very knowledgeable.”

Clive Mills is now reflecting on his experiences with Marlin, a relationship that began more than a decade ago.

“I haven’t come across anybody who can provide the support that they have,” says Clive, the IT Systems Manager at Williamson Dickie Europe.

“They’re a really good bunch, really friendly and willing to help.”