Dale Sturgill | Contact Center Director
WATCH THE VIDEOA typical DirectBuy customer is anyone who wants to save money, but also has the ability to do so. Many are working on home improvements and need to make multiple purchases throughout the year. With hundreds of thousands of members, the team at DirectBuy needs to handle over 30,000 calls per month. It’s a fast-paced, production-driven environment, where the agents are passionate about providing great service.
In addition to the office in Merrillville, there are six offices in Canada to accommodate Canadian customers, with a total staff of over 600. The calls are mostly inbound, and can range from answering questions, to placing orders, to even helping to design custom flooring or cabinetry items. Since all parts of the business rely so heavily on phone calls, they need a dependable communications system that they can keep their business running smoothly.
Dale Sturgill is the Contact Center Director at DirectBuy. He joined the team in 2015, shortly after the decision was made to switch to Nextiva for communications services. With their previous VoIP provider, DirectBuy noticed a lot of limitations in features. After only one month of their service, they began searching for a new provider and decided on Nextiva because of the range of reports, features, and add-ons available.
“The process of switching to Nextiva was as smooth as it could be. We worked with the onboarding team to make the switch after-hours, so none of our customers were affected. It was only thirty-five to forty users at the time, and we’ve since added on over one hundred more,” Sturgill explained. DirectBuy has also completed switching over their Canadian offices to Nextiva, with their goal being for all of the company to be transitioned by the end of 2017.
“The first two weeks of onboarding were dedicated to training and getting started, and now we can onboard a new agent in just a day. It’s simple to use,” Sturgil said. The team received admin, user, call center, and Nextiva Analytics training. They continue to stay in touch with their Account Manager and get trained regularly on new features and to onboard new team members. While Sturgill is the main administrator for the account, a few other employees are now trained on using NextOS (Voice) to easily complete call forwarding requests, change answering machine messaging, or even add new users.
All staff at DirectBuy currently uses the Nextiva App for desktop for their phone needs. This includes the 500 employees in Merrillville, and the approximately 100 remote employees. The Nextiva App provided the flexibility they need to run their business from around the United States and Canada. Sturgill stated, “The remote users use Nextiva as though they’re sitting right here in the office. They use the softphones connected directly through their laptop. Our customers have no idea if they are talking to someone in our headquarters in Merrillville, or with someone who is working from home from locations across the country. It even keeps us running when the weather may be too severe to ask our employees to drive into the office. They can just plug in at home, and it’s as though there’s no problems.”
“Nextiva has been extremely flexible to work with. They even created custom integrations for our workforce management company, enabling us to do more than we thought was possible with the system.”
As the Contact Center Director, Dale Sturgill believes that the analytics and reports that are available through Nextiva are critical to how DirectBuy functions. DirectBuy uses the Call Center Reporting features, as well as Analytics. “The combination of stats and reports that we can see from the Call Center and Nextiva Analytics is fantastic. Our leads walk the floor with the admin dashboard open on iPads tracking the call volume and different queues. Analytics provides us with reports that have helped us adjust our staffing needs. We are receiving real-time information that is irreplaceable, and vital to our success.”
DirectBuy also uses other features, including Advanced Call Recording. This enables them to listen calls and provide feedback for their agents, directly from Nextiva Analytics. Sturgill explained, “It’s been great for quality analysis.”
Despite how much his team and company have benefitted from the features and service that Nextiva offers, Sturgill persists that the customer service is really what makes Nextiva a fantastic partner. “Nextiva has been extremely flexible to work with. They even created custom integrations for our workforce management company, enabling us to do more than we thought was possible with the system.”
“Nextiva has been an absolutely critical component of our growth. There is no way that we would be where we are today without our relationship, and the service that Nextiva brings to us,” Sturgill continued. “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.”
