City Hire

About City Hire

City Hire is an independent tool and plant hire company supplying the construction industry since 1989. With a focus on high-quality equipment, reliable service and industry-leading technology, City Hire have seen their capabilities grow and they now operate from six large distribution centres. They supply a wide range of equipment, including Plant, Powered Access, Tools and Non-Mechanical equipment to customers in the North West, Midlands, London and the South East.

Objectives

City Hire has a relentless focus on achieving world-class efficiency to enable a frictionless experience that puts customers in control of their hire.

A row of neatly aligned scissor lifts in a warehouse, representing City Hire’s focus on efficiency, organisation, and streamlined operations to deliver a seamless and reliable customer hire experience.

Challenge

With thousands of incoming calls, WhatsApp’s, live chat and emails per day, the volume of enquiries to triage was overwhelming, orders were being missed and the business was not meeting key performance indicators.

A row of excavators lined up in a depot, illustrating the scale of operations and the high volume of incoming requests and orders that contributed to the business’s overwhelming workload and missed enquiries.

With 4 separate comms platforms including a stand-alone telephone system, webchat and WhatsApp (operated from a single mobile phone) and with 10 customer experience coordinators working in different locations, there was a lack of effective work allocation, sharing of information and streamlining to support the business’ requirement to provide outstanding customer service.

The Espria Solution

Following consultation with the client, Espria offered a holistic solution to the problems City Hire were facing which included staff training and support. After the successful demonstration of the Five 9 contact centre solution, Espria were able to automate much of the triage process for incoming emails and webchat, easing the burden on the IT Manager.

A row of scissor lifts organised in a warehouse, representing the streamlined and structured approach introduced by Espria’s solution, helping City Hire automate processes, improve efficiency, and better manage high volumes of enquiries.

The Five9 contact centre brought together email, calls, webchat and WhatsApp for Business communications with all channels reporting directly into a single application, available to all the customer service agents, wherever their location. With a single monthly charge, City Hire are better able to budget and don’t lose any calls. The platform supports unified reporting of calls, emails, web chat and WhatsApp interactions, enabling the monitoring of agent performance whilst ensuring core SLAs are met. Fundamentally, all customer experience coordinators are now able to service customers from across all communications channels, from a single interface. The solution gives a 360-degree view of the entire teams’ activity and improves resource management, whilst providing a considerably enhanced and consistent customer experience. Stuart Arrand, Snr IT Coordinator commented, “During our project to enhance the digital experience for our customers, we sought a user-friendly platform that would streamline communication for our customer experience coordinators.

Our focus was on implementing an Omni-Channel feature to consolidate all communications onto a single platform, ensuring fast and frictionless interactions. After evaluating various company platforms, Espria stood out due to their meticulous attention to our needs and the rigorous communication demands within our organisation. The implementation of the Espria solution proceeded smoothly and according to plan. I am confident that it will provide centralised automation and offer a comprehensive overview, empowering our agents to uphold our service promise.”