Merry Hatton Garden Centre

Background to Merry Hatton Garden Centre

Merryhatton is a small, independent garden centre located in rural East Lothian.

A popular café is also on-site, and the business has grown into an award-winning venue, firmly established as a favourite amongst locals and visitors.

Challenges

Major issues had plagued the Garden Centre’s telephone network which severely interrupted business. Vodafone’s One Net system essentially transformed desk phones into glorified mobiles, but these were extremely unreliable and Merryhatton only received one in 10 calls – an unimaginable loss of business.

Staff had resorted to using their own phones to work around the problem, but this was far from ideal.

Lorraine Hunter, Merryhatton’s Marketing Manager, commented: “Our existing telephone system had been problematic from the outset with a poor quality signal and lack of support. Additionally, our customers made it clear that they wanted free WIFI in our café, so we approached Jera to make the upgrades.”

Jera IT

Over the course of one week, Jera were passed through several partners before finally getting the relevant information and being able to cancel the incumbent telephone system.

The replacement system was then installed and ready within two days.

The mainline numbers onto a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) cloud-based network was imported, enabling inbound call routing, call queueing and voice messaging – the complete package. It also incorporated an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system, allowing callers to choose menu options, such as ‘Press 1 for the café’, ‘Press 2 for reception’, etc.

Outcomes

The system installed included a failover process, enabling the lines to be rerouted at the flick of a switch should the broadband ever go down – ensuring Merryhatton never miss a call again.