Neither Cold nor Snow Prevents Dunn Tire from Driving Greater Sales with Vertical

Dunn Tire LLC

Background

Dunn Tire is one of the largest retail and wholesale distributors of tires, tire equipment and wheels in the northeastern United States. Its headquarters are located at a distribution center in Buffalo, and it maintains three additional administrative distribution center “hubs” across New York and Pennsylvania. In addition, the company runs 31 retail storefronts throughout Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester and northwestern Pennsylvania.

Tire sales are highly seasonal. Not only does Dunn Tire’s business essentially double during the icy winter months, but it can spike dramatically when a snowstorm hits. To manage these variables, the company adds staff when and where call volumes increase, making it a challenge to manage calls when headcount is always in flux.

Dunn’s previous phone infrastructure consisted of a hosted VoIP system that was so unreliable and inflexible, when call volume swelled, staff on duty  sometimes could not even get a simple dial tone. This cost the company a considerable amount of business during storms when they  were often inundated with calls from frenzied customers.

In addition to its lack of scalability, the hosted system had no effective fail-over provisions; an outage on the host’s infrastructure would impact Dunn’s entire communications footprint. As a result, all 35 of its locations were forced to maintain separate phone systems and “mini call centers” with no connectivity or shared bandwidth among them. The hosted configuration lacked reporting or recording capabilities, providing little detail on call activity. Voice quality was poor, and calls were frequently dropped.

“Communication is so incredibly important here, it simply can’t be interrupted,” explained Tim Schroeder, Director of Continuous Improvement at Dunn Tire. “Our next system had to perform impeccably, and be versatile enough to accommodate the unavoidable fluctuations of our business.”

Solution

During its search to replace its failing legacy system, Dunn Tire reviewed 12 different solutions, including the Vertical Wave IP Unified Communications platform recommended by The PCA Group, a major Vertical Communications dealer in the Buffalo area.

The PCA Group showed Dunn how the Wave IP solution addressed the company’s complex communications issues, including the ability to network all 35 of its locations together via a high-speed data network using the WaveNet application. To accommodate seasonal fluctuation in staffing, additional AccessLine SIP Trunks could easily be added as needed. In addition, should an outage occur at one location, the telephony solution enables communications services intended for one location to be intelligently routed to another location.

With its hosted system, Dunn had struggled to establish a call center. Wave IP’s powerful Contact Center application made it simple to set one up. With Wave IP’s intelligent call routing capability, calls are now easily routed through Dunn Tire’s headquarters and delivered automatically to the appropriate representative or subject matter expert, regardless of their location.

Results

Once a hodgepodge of separate, hosted communications systems, the Vertical Wave IP platform now provides Dunn Tire with seamless connectivity across its entire organization.

Dunn Tire takes full advantage of Wave IP’s call recording and reporting capabilities. Administration uses call logs and reviews recordings to rate the performance of individual agents in each office. With this new business intelligence, the company established its “Quest for Excellence” program, in which evaluations of call data and recordings are used to award bonuses to the top stores.

In addition, Dunn’s Software Developer Matt Sajecki is integrating Wave IP’s customizable Call Classifier function with the company’s customer records database, so important caller information can be provided to agents as each call comes in, as well as when they dial out. “We couldn’t dream of doing that with our hosted system,” confirmed Sajecki.

“The reliability of Vertical’s solution has been outstanding,” Sajecki added. “We’ve been able to take advantage of traditional POTS phone lines as back-up, so there are no failures. And even with an individual server in each of 35 locations, the system has required nothing but basic maintenance.”

“Vertical’s Wave IP restored our faith in phone systems,” said Schroeder. “Having a consistent, flexible and fullfeatured solution enables us to truly optimize sales, even through the unpredictable peaks of snow season when we can achieve up to 40% of our business. We maintain an extensive footprint, yet the solution allows us to function as a streamlined, efficient and unified organization.”