National Housing Federation
The National Housing Federation Uses the RingCentral Cloud Solution to Empower Its Mobile Workforce, Better Serve Customers, and Save Money
Industry
Non-Profit,
Public Sector
Public Sector
Hq
London,
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Year founded
1935
Employees
110+
Industry
Non-Profit,
Public Sector
Public Sector
Hq
London,
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Year founded
1935
Employees
110+
As a nonprofit, we are always looking for ways to save money so we can reinvest our revenue into providing more value for our members, cost savings is another important victory we’re enjoying thanks to RingCentral.
Kalpesh Sonecha
National Housing Federation’s Head of ICT
28%
quicker to answer customer support calls since migrating to RingCentral Contact Center.
70%
reduction in abandoned support calls since rolling out Contact Center.
8.5
hours faster to respond to support emails—from 14.5 hours to 6 hours—with Contact Center.
The National Housing Federation is the voice of housing associations in England. Their vision is a country where everyone can live in a good quality home they can afford. The members provide more than two and a half million homes for around six million people. Each year they invest in a diverse range of neighbourhood projects that help create strong, vibrant communities.
New flexible work environment requires a cloud-based communications solution
As its on-premises phone system neared end of life, the National Housing Federation had to weigh several key factors in deciding what system to deploy next, including native mobile support and finding a solution that provided strong value for the money.
“IT is the backbone of the service we provide to our housing association members,” explains Kalpesh Sonecha, National Housing Federation’s Head of Information and Communication Technology. “We need our staff to be accessible to our customers whether they are working remotely, travelling, or in the office. We also can’t afford to have our phones going down.”
When the National Housing Federation decided it was time to replace its legacy phone system, the organisation’s ICT team had to carefully rethink its communications infrastructure. “We introduced flexible working a year ago. This meant about 60% of our staff was in the office on any given day, and the other 40% was working remotely,” says Kalpesh. “With the old phone system, which required our staff to be in the office to make/receive calls, employees had to remember to forward business calls to other numbers when they weren’t in the office, or they’d have to give out their mobile numbers to external contacts.”
Phasing out its aging phone system provided the NHF another opportunity to improve its operations. “We used different platforms and vendors for everything,” explains Kalpesh. “One system for our phone service, another for our audio and video conferences, and yet another for team messaging. We weren’t looking only to upgrade our phone system; we wanted to unify all of these communications services into a single solution.”
Industry experts and the organisation’s own due diligence lead to RingCentral
After reviewing many cloud communications providers, RingCentral was the NHF’s clear choice.
“We reviewed Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and found RingCentral listed as a Leader in the unified communications space. So we did our own evaluation and determined that, yes, RingCentral was the strongest solution available for our needs.”
Because RingCentral let us put all of our communications into a single platform, which our staff can use anywhere, all of our employees are now fully productive even when they’re on the road or working remotely.
Kalpesh Sonecha
National Housing Federation’s Head of ICT
Deploying RingCentral leads to major operational benefits
“RingCentral let us put all of our communications including voice, texting, video and team messaging into a single platform. Our staff can use the new solution from anywhere; all of our employees are now fully productive even when they’re on the road or working remotely,” says Kalpesh.
“Our external affairs managers, who travel all over England as our roaming ambassadors, can be reachable on their business numbers or chat with their teams back in the office from their RingCentral apps. When employees travel to meet with members or run an event, they can join or even host a video conference on the move. This mobile productivity and accessibility is so valuable that the NHF can’t put a price on it.”
The NHF is also a distributed organisation, with locations in London, Bristol, and Manchester, and RingCentral’s unified communications helped connect all three locations. “Thanks to RingCentral’s Glip team messaging feature,” Kalpesh explains, “our employees across offices are able to collaborate much more effectively, using their Glip platform to chat in real time, share files, track tasks, and manage projects.”
Additionally, by consolidating the organisation’s primary communications services—phone, audio and video conferencing, team messaging—into a unified solution with RingCentral, the NHF has been able to reduce its overall IT communications costs. “As a nonprofit, we are always looking for ways to save money so we can reinvest our revenue into providing more value for our members; cost savings is another important victory we’re enjoying thanks to RingCentral.”
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