Enabling a smooth transition to remote working for The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo with 3CX & Wave

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is an iconic event company, with over 30 employees, that stages an annual event on the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle every August. Running for 25 nights across the month, the show sees military and cultural musicians, dancers and performers take to the stage in front of a live audience of 220,000 people each year.

It sets out to deliver world-class entertainment, and year on year exceeds the expectations of its audience and partners. In doing so, the Tattoo is proud to support many military and art charities, contributing greatly to its charitable purposes and the connection of people and culture.

The challenge

The organisation had an existing business telephony solution in place but were already looking for an upgrade before the pandemic struck. Ewan Hunter, IT Manager at The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo explains: “Our previous solution had been in place for a while, and we were due for an upgrade. Initially, we started our search for a new solution before the pandemic, however the need for this was ramped up when we moved to remote working and were put in a position whereby only one person could answer the phones, which are normally monitored by five to six people.”

The shift to remote working further shone a light on the shortcomings that their existing system had and the implications on their day-to-day business operations. The system was installed locally which meant there was no remote access for those working from home, which brought about disruption to internal and external communications across the business.

The company knew they needed to transition to a new phone solution to allow for the change in circumstances, “We found that we needed to change to a cloud-based solution with softphones which was more flexible for our staff working remotely and on-site”.

“We found that we needed to change to a cloud-based solution with softphones which was more flexible for our staff working remotely and on-site”.

Ewan Hunter, IT Manager

The Solution

Gradwell stood out as a leading provider of cloud communications solutions, with the Tattoo eventually choosing to progress with Gradwell’s 3CX offering based on our 3CX accreditation status, “We compared 2 different systems and the 3CX system was a much more flexible solution that fitted our business needs. The expertise that Gradwell have in supporting 3CX being a Titanium partner, this gave us the confidence that Gradwell could support our needs. The other suppliers we reviewed provided good support, but Gradwell were the next level up based on their accreditation.”

The transition over to cloud-based telephony has had a profoundly positive impact on the whole organisation. “Since transitioning over to 3CX we have benefitted from better insights into the number of customers contacting us, this is important as, with our old system, it was difficult to ascertain the volume of calls coming into the business.”

Remote working has been made easier due to the introduction of cloud telephony. Staff now make use of the softphone feature, meaning that they can make calls over the internet using their computers rather than a traditional phone line. Staff that are on the move are also able to make use of the 3CX mobile app so that they are available wherever they may be.

Customer service has also benefitted. To compliment the 3CX solution, they added on our very own cloud telephony software, Wave as part of their package. Ewan explains further: “When we go on sale for the Tattoo each year, we receive a large influx of calls in a short time period. We needed a system that could help handle larger volumes of calls, so our customers didn’t just get an engaged tone once the 3CX system queue was fully used up and Wave met that need”.

Wave has also provided them with a greater understanding of their call statistics, “It has given us insights into the number of calls that we receive for our on-sale days, and this helps us for future planning of staffing levels we need to handle the number of calls we receive.”

Gradwell are pleased to have supported this fantastic event and charitable organisation, supplying a combination of our highly accredited support services, together with 3CX and Wave to meet the complex needs of this organisation.

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