In a pandemic impacted world and in the middle of a construction boom, Holcim NZ is a critical part of the construction supply chain, as a leading supplier of cement and aggregate throughout New Zealand.

Just prior to the Covid 19 pandemic arriving on our shores in early 2020, the company had made a strategic decision to shift its customer service centre to use a cloud-based telecoms system, in order to increase flexibility and deliver a higher standard of service to customers.

About Holcim NZ

Holcim is a global leader in innovative and sustainable building solutions, employing 60,000 people world-wide. With a proud history in Aotearoa New Zealand that dates back more than 130 years, today Holcim operates 12 sites, including a quarry, and is a leading supplier of low-carbon cement products across all regions.

Holcim NZ was previously known as Milburn New Zealand Ltd, until being purchased by Holcim in 1998.

Driven by its mission to help its customers decarbonise building across the country, in 2023 Holcim opened a new low-carbon cement replacement facility in the Ports of Auckland and launched its low-carbon cement product, ECOPlanet.

Learn more about Holcim New Zealand.

Business Challenge – Customer Service Centralisation

More recent changes also saw increasing centralisation of the business operation, with Holcim customers now calling their customer service team located in Auckland, rather than contacting individual depots regarding their orders.

Having a centralised customer services team also required a centralised phone solution, which began the process of shifting to a cloud-based telecommunications system.

Unfortunately, the telecoms provider they had originally contracted for this project had failed to deliver a reliable system, and instead of improving their call answering KPIs, repeated failures of the system were having a frustrating effect.

After three months of working to get the issues remedied, Holcim’s in house Senior IT Field Services Analyst, George Chang and Business Solutions Manager Karyn McKnight went to market again to find an alternative provider who would deliver the results they needed.

OneCall’s Solution

Fortunately, they discovered that the provider they were looking for was very close at hand – downstairs in fact, from their Christchurch offices.

IT specialists and VOIP providers OneCall had been operating in the South Island for over a decade, providing a high level of IT support and consultancy for SMEs through to large manufacturing and exporting businesses and proved to be an excellent fit for Holcim’s requirements.

Jason Payne, OneCall’s Director Sales and Marketing, was able to offer a solution for Holcim that would ensure their call centre was able to give visibility and capability to meet the KPIs for performance and customer satisfaction that they were looking for.

Having had issues with their previous provider, Holcim was looking for assurance that OneCall could deliver what they needed in their phone system. They asked for a guarantee and Jason was prepared to put money on the line.

Cloud Based 3CX Telephony System

Holcim was set up on a 3CX system hosted in OneCall’s data centre, with a customised reporting dashboard that enabled senior staff to see at a glance how call performance was going, as well as monitoring waiting times, number of dropped calls etc.

They went into a trial period with the new 3CX system, which worked extremely well and helped to transform customer service delivery for the Holcim team – resolving their previous call centre system’s difficulties and delivering a reliable platform with high visibility.

Customised Reporting Dashboard to Increase Visibility

Although the system itself was off the shelf, OneCall created a customised reporting dashboard in Google for Holcim that delivers a daily report on critical stats and can be viewed at any time.

“They gave us the level of transparency and instant data we were looking for to improve our customer service systems performance,” said Karyn McKnight.

“It is highly visual and delivers important data in real time – which meant we could track how many calls were being dropped or missed, length of wait times for customers and more.”

As part of the new solution, OneCall also addressed the need to keep phone calls from Holcim’s staff and drivers separate from customer calls, ensuring customer service had a dedicated space for prioritised service to customers.

The new driver solution is called Linestone, and automatically recognises Holcim driver phone numbers so they can be routed and dealt with on their own dedicated line, reducing the pressure on the now dedicated customer phone line.

Outcomes 

1. With visibility of call centre data, Holcim had the ability to monitor and improve their call centre performance resulting in:
   • 40% improvement in the grade of service which effectively reduced the time the Holcim team took to answer an incoming call
   • abandoned call instances are now regularly exceeding KPIs
2. Significant reduction in the number of support tickets to the call centre service provider, with system users able to email OneCall’s support desk directly to have any issues resolved.
3. Staff able to log into the dashboard remotely to manage their call queues supporting hybrid location working models.
4. Cost effective pricing model.
5. Highly responsive IT support to address any issues or make adjustments.
6. Ability to set up an additional solution for Holcim truck drivers so their calls to HQ were kept separate from the customer call lines.

The Result

The resulting partnership between Holcim and OneCall continues to deliver a high standard of outcomes for the client. 

“OneCall have been an excellent business to engage with who really considered our business requirements and determined the right solution to meet our team and customer needs.  They have a team who are responsive and very easy to deal with and a selection of products to offer as solutions, together with staff who are able to determine specific or bespoke solutions.  Our experience working with OneCall has always resulted in great solutions that are delivered quickly and at very reasonable cost.  We highly recommend working with this great team!”

• Karyn McKnight
  Business Solutions & Quality Manager

If you’re a New Zealand business with questions about IT support, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our teams in Christchurch, Dunedin or Tauranga.