Redwood Funerals

Redwood Funerals combines four businesses in one with RingCentral

Region

Asia Pacific

Company size

1–19

Industry

Consumer Services

redwoodfunerals.com.au

Products used

We find throughout the funeral industry most staff tend to make calls to customers using their own mobile phone, so if they leave, they have an opportunity to take a client base with them. For us, we needed a solution that would help to keep all our customer communications in-house.

Mark Coates

Founder and Director, Redwood Funerals

Four in one
Operating four separate businesses on one telephony platform

Flexibility and mobility
Enabling greater flexibility and mobility for team members

Improving CX and data protection
Setting telephony policies to improve customer experience and protect customer data

Responsiveness
Better responsiveness across all four businesses

Based in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Redwood Funerals (“Redwood”) is a family-owned and operated funeral director offering its services to the greater Melbourne metro, Mornington Peninsula and throughout Victoria. The company prides itself on delivering unmatched experiences for its customers and also operates three other related businesses - Victorian Coffins & Caskets, Deceased Transport Solutions and The Essential Cremation Co. However, with a workforce operating from a range of out-of-office locations, Redwood resorted to staff carrying multiple mobile phones to stay in contact with its customers.

“We needed a telephony solution where we could have everything centralised, but also gave us more flexibility with new team members coming on board,” said Mark Coates, Founder and Director, Redwood Funerals.

Redwood wanted to provide a differentiated customer experience for each of its businesses. As an example, it was important that calls to the funeral business are answered in person, but that’s not always possible if a team member is currently attending a service – so Redwood needed a solution that would ring other team members to ensure the customer could speak to someone immediately.

Redwood also needed to protect its most valuable asset – its customers.

“We find throughout the funeral industry most staff tend to make calls to customers using their own mobile phone, so if they leave, they have an opportunity to take a client base with them. For us, we needed a solution that would help to keep all our customer communications in-house,” said Coates.

Take a quick tour of RingCentral

Watch demo

Four businesses representing a communications challenge

Redwood deployed RingCentral RingEX, a cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform.

Redwood’s team members access the full features of the platform via the RingCentral app that they can run on either a company-provided mobile or their own personal device.

Redwood was using 1300-number services as the contact point for its businesses, with those numbers forwarding to mobiles. Those numbers were ported to RingCentral and the system configured to connect them to different hunt groups, which means multiple people can pick up the call. Separate recorded after-hours messages have been created, and operational hours and rules put in place for each business number.

“The RingCentral app is a really valuable tool. I can easily put someone on hold, transfer the call, or conference someone else in. The other day, I had a customer query about a delivery, so I said, ‘I’ll just connect our delivery driver to the call’. I connected the driver and sorted out the issue on the spot,” said Coates.

RingCentral’s platform also demonstrated its flexibility recently with Redwood bringing on a new crew to work day shift in its transport business. Buying a new mobile phone for the van, Coates was able to set up the phone and download the RingCentral app, create a new login and assign a telephone number via the RingCentral Admin portal, ready for use the following day.

Customer experience improvements and greater flexibility

By switching from the 1300 services to RingCentral, Redwood has slightly reduced its monthly telephony costs but with the added benefits of a better customer experience and greater flexibility and mobility for its team. Also, as the business expands, it will be much easier and more cost-effective to provision new users’ phone extensions.

“RingCentral has the scope to grow with us. As we bring new people on board, we don't need to buy them all mobile phones. We can pay them a certain percentage every month to have the app on their own phone. We have a policy that all work calls must be made through RingCentral, so we’ve got a record of all those calls and our customer base is secure as well,” said Coates.

“My biggest scepticism was the fact that we're moving to an app-based solution, and is it going to work all the time? RingCentral is giving us what we need, and it works all the time,” said Coates.

With the RingCentral system only recently deployed, Redwood is still considering how the platform’s features could be extended beyond telephony.

“We have just started having team meetings and sending all internal communications via the app, but having the ability to send text messages externally is one feature we hope to see in the future,” said Coates.

More to explore

Vredevoogd

Western Michigan’s top HVAC service provider uses RingEX (Message, Video, Phone) to increase staff mobility, improve communication reliability, and lower telecom costs

Read story

Barx Parx

Barx Parx is adding bookings, increasing revenue, and delighting clients (and their humans) with RingCentral texting.

Read story

Envera Systems

Envera Systems leverages RingEX, Contact Center, and RingCentral Video to improve operations and deliver better service.

Read story

A woman is using her laptop while on a RingCentral video call

Integral Recruiting Services

This full-service recruiting firm uses RingCentral AI Receptionist to answer 93% of its calls, saving hours a month, and AI Assistant to slash its team’s email writing time by 67%.

Read story

Aurora Construction Materials

Learn how Aurora Construction Materials implemented an integrated RingCentral UCaaS and CCaaS solution, improving customer engagement, streamlining processes and providing a platform for future innovation.

Read story

Private Religious University

Discover how this leading private university leverages RingEX and RingCX to improve the telephony experience for its 5,500 employees and 35,000 students.

Read story