The Independent General Practice (IGP)

Utilising TTNC's comprehensive VoIP Phone System for an easy transition from office to remote working.

The Independent General Practice (IGP) has been a customer of ours for more than 14 years. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the national lockdown, they needed a more flexible solution for their calls as they suddenly had to work remotely.

We caught up with Operations Director Kieran Reynolds, who talked about the issues we resolved by helping them move to our Cloud Based Phone system.

The Customer

"The Independent General Practice is a private GP service that offers professional patient care, treatment and advice to individuals, families and businesses. We pride ourselves on offering outstanding patient care from the moment an enquiry is made until a solution is found.

Our patients have direct access to the very best in private healthcare services, including GP consultations, travel advice and vaccination, physiotherapy treatments, occupational health services and a range of the latest anti-ageing treatments.

We were the first private GP practice registered by the Health Inspectorate Wales (HIW) in 2004 and have expanded into multiple private healthcare practices across South Wales and the West of England."

The Challenge

"We have been managing our main number with TTNC since 2007. The TTNC number was used as our main point of contact, forwarding internal calls to our existing telephone system.

Due to the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, we were presented with new problems and opportunities. We wanted our home-based clinicians to continue to offer healthcare services, without fielding calls from our traditional analogue office lines.

As we already had a successful relationship with TTNC over the last 14 years, they were our first point of contact for exploring our options."

Objectives & Goals

"We needed a way to route calls without using our on-premises phone system. We wanted to direct inbound calls to our clinicians, who would be aware that the call was routed via the IGP number.

Alongside this, we wanted our callers to have the same experience they had become used to over the last 14 years, as they would if calling the clinic. Being able to transfer calls between staff members was a must.

As our clinicians would be working from home, it was vital to ensure that they were not disturbed outside of their working hours, so the ability to configure time plans to automate this was important.

We wanted to do this without spending more than necessary while ensuring that calls continued to be routed as efficiently as possible."

The Solution

"We contacted the Customer Service team at TTNC for advice; after discussing our requirements, it was quickly evident that the simplest way to achieve these goals was via VoIP, bypassing our existing system. VoIP would allow us to make and receive calls over the internet, and all of our clinical staff could use the TTNC Mobile Softphone App to handle calls wherever they were.

With the help of the TTNC team, VoIP Users were set up for each member of staff; the free mobile app and its simple QR code registration meant that we could quickly roll it out to the whole team. This allowed us to make free internal calls and quick transfers to colleagues.

Two Ring Groups were created, each using Forward To All; this ensured that calls would be answered as quickly as possible and distributed evenly throughout the team.

The first group of eight users would answer the majority of the inbound calls - If they were all busy, calls would automatically route to the overflow group, who would be on hand to ensure that no callers were missed.

We enabled Time Based Forwarding, which allowed us to automatically route calls to the right places during the week, ensuring that calls only attempted those staff members on shift.

From our initial enquiry, as the first lockdown began, to having a plan in place must only have taken a matter of days; we were up and running in a week."

The Result

"The process was quick and straightforward, and the support from TTNC was excellent as always.

The free TTNC Mobile App gave us the sound quality and reliability we needed to guarantee that our callers weren't given a below-par service. Using Ring Groups meant that our callers' waiting time has decreased, and all calls are handled much more efficiently.

Since the initial implementation, all of our admin staff have switched to VoIP, which means two-thirds of our entire workforce are now using the TTNC app to answer calls.

Being able to answer calls remotely and internally transfer calls despite being in separate locations has enabled us to move to home working. It's also freed up office space for additional clinical rooms, which is fantastic.

Most of our call takers now either work full time from home or are only in the office for part of the week; this is something that wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for TTNC's VoIP service and the TTNC Mobile App."