Sovran Self Storage, Inc. is a fully integrated, self-administered, and self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) that acquires, manages, and constructs self storage properties. At December 31, 2004, the Company owned and/or operated 271 self storage facilities encompassing over 16 million square feet, making it one of the five largest self-storage companies in the United States. Founded in 1982, the Company is headquartered in Buffalo, New York, and employs approximately 800 people.
Headquarter Location,
+ 250 remote locations

Value Proposition:

Sovran has the need to answer all customer inquires from a single location. VoIP converges voice and data into a single integrated Contact Center Solution allowing the existing agents to dramatically increase the number of calls they answer in a single day.

Sovran has plans to double the number of location that it services. The key to this expansion is the ability to answer inquires and service customers quickly and efficiently. Improved customer response and optimizing resources will have a calculable affect on Sovran’s bottom line. The Contact Center solution deployed by PremCom makes the idea of a “Virtual” Call Center a reality. This VoIP solution allows agents to direct calls between the main location and any of the 250+ storage locations effortlessly. Robust system reporting lets Sovran match staff to levels of service, quickly identifies and solve resource problems.

Sovran is a perfect example where a converged solution with VoIP at the core not only reduces operating expenses, but adds significant dollars to the bottom line through improved customer service and efficiency.


Testimonial:

Uncle Bob’s Storage sounds like a down home, friendly little local business. That’s just the feeling its parent company wanted to maintain when they sought a new phone system to connect their 280 stores to their Western New York call center.

Sovran also wanted to provide the best service to each caller and to do so, they needed to be able to track each call to determine important details like call length, number of times the caller is transferred, and staffers involved in the handling of each call. So, when the company sought a new phone system recently, they turned to PremCom Corporation, and a ShoreTel IP PBX and their Contact Center application.

Today, Randy Hillman, the customer care manager for Sovran, can literally sit at his computer and monitor all the calls coming into his call center, and it is easy for him to see that the flow of calls moves more quickly and efficiently. With the new ShoreTel system, the connection between headquarters and outposts is quite literally, “shored up.”

“We wanted to connect the stores as if they were part of the home office,” Hillman continued. “Now they are just an extension away, and that’s what we are excited about.. We can better see what our store managers are doing and we can see the numbers coming in. Everyone is more connected.”

The new ShoreTel system is also a benefit to Uncle Bob’s telephone shoppers, in a culture where callers are growing increasingly used to getting lost in computerized neverlands of other business telephone systems.

The center, which handles up to 2,000 calls a day, has increased their answer percentage, so that call abandonment has greatly decreased. Operators can see how many times a call has been passed around so they can determine the caller’s level of frustration. They are also able to get customers hooked up with local representatives more easily. Now, a computer keystroke or two pushes the call back to the original store. “To the customer, it’s a seamless process,” Hillman explained.

Hillman also lauds the Shortel system’s ease of use. “It used to be that if I wanted to move someone from one side of the building to the other it would be a multiple day effort with a very expensive visit from our local telephone service provider. Now, we can change phones from one place to the next in minutes at no cost at all.”

Most importantly, he said, is how easy it has been for his staff to adapt to the new phone service. “We have quadrupled the technology and the amount of features, but our people have found the system very easy to understand and to use.”

And that’s good news for Uncle Bob’s, because when the system works, it makes everybody feel a little friendlier, and a little bit more at home.