Commercial Interior Designers – Case Study
Background
Long established commercial interior designers who love to find solutions to their client’s problems by creating inspiring and practical workspaces. The requirement of a telephone answering service, up until this year, had never been one that the small business had considered.
Based in London with a small team of around 11 employees they had cornered a niche market in designing and creating commercial interiors for clients that were willing to push the boundaries of a “normal” workspace. With decade’s worth of combined knowledge and creativity, the company has been responsible for the interior design of some very well-known, and not so well-known, brands from full office refurbishments to simple partitioning. One of their main focuses, and one that wins them a lot of client referrals, is there understanding of how frustrating large scale projects can potentially be and how budgets can quickly be stretched. Their project managers are some of the best in their line of work and as result spend much of their time out on site but this is not why they needed to outsource their call answering.
Office partitions bring an unexpected demand
Our new client’s main problem was one of unexpected growth, but not of their main business, from a product that they build and supply for many of their designs – office partitions.
When workers began to tentatively return to their offices after the lockdowns of 2020 and 21 many found their workspace had to change in order to comply with social distancing.
A quick and easy way to do this was to erect permanent and semi-permanent office partitions and screens, our new client suddenly found themselves inundated with enquiries and orders for a product that they had always offered but was absolutely not their main source of work. Even at our office here at Connect, we found the need for higher and more partitions to help keep our office based call answering staff safe.
Our client was finding that the build and supply of office partitions was detracting from their main interior design business and so decided to create a separate website for enquiries.
Connect offer more than just a telephone answering service
Following a referral from their web designer, an existing Connect client, they contacted us initially looking for our operators to take some simple call-back details. The more they spoke with our customer service team, the more it became apparent that we could offer them so much more than a simple telephone answering service. We supplied them with an 03 smart number giving them a nationwide appearance and, after some integration from their web designer, we have now set-up an online ordering system that our call answering operators can access meaning that our client rarely needs to be interacting with enquiries. Instead they are able to instruct their newly set-up team to make and supply office partitions to clients all throughout the UK.More time to focus on the core of their business
When we were first approached it was because our new client had been struggling to focus on their main business, this was creating stress and a type of pressure to deliver that they were deeply uncomfortable and unfamiliar with.
After setting up their call answering service and programmable smart number with Connect, they were suddenly able to relax by outsourcing so much more than they had ever believed possible. They are able to run the office partition side of their business with a very “hands off” approach thanks to the fantastic website they have created and the integration with our virtual reception team.
Page Last Updated: March 8th, 2023