Haag Wonen is a housing corporation in The Hague, committed to providing good, affordable and sustainable housing. Together with their customers, they work to make the city better and that starts with solid communication. When Microsoft announced the phase-out of Skype for Business, it became clear to Haag Wonen that it was time to consider the next step.
Haag Wonen has been a long-time customer of Interstellar and for a while, they had been using Skype for Business with Anywhere365 for their contact center. In July 2019, Microsoft announced that Skype for Business would reach “end of life” status in July 2021. This meant that the system would no longer receive updates and support would cease.
Peter Eliazar, ICT coordinator at Haag Wonen, explained what this meant for the organization: “When Microsoft announces something like this, you can’t ignore it. Our contact center also had some functional development needs and that wasn’t possible with Anywhere365 via Skype anymore. So, the time was right to explore new options.” It quickly became evident that Teams was the logical next step.
“We were quite satisfied with Skype, so the calling experience suited us. At Haag Wonen, we follow a Microsoft First policy, use Office365 and plan to work with Teams. Teams Phone was therefore the most logical step,” said Peter. Benno Boeijink, also an ICT coordinator at Haag Wonen, added: “In addition, we have specific architectural requirements. We want to set this up using SaaS services. Skype for Business was hosted and technically, Teams Phone aligns better with our future vision.”
Although no specific development points were considered at the start of the project, Teams offers the flexibility to add these later. The ability to transition to Teams step by step, while retaining functionality, was ultimately decisive. Haag Wonen made the switch to Teams Phone with Anywhere365 for their contact center.
"A strong relationship of trust in which we like to challenge each other."
Peter EliazarIT ManagerSince there was still an ongoing contract with a provider, it was decided to continue using that for the time being. The telephony is now hosted on Interstellar’s server, as Haag Wonen prefers to consolidate as many services as possible with a single provider. Since the environment was already familiar to our team, we were able to execute the transition via FastTrack.
To ensure that employees could effectively use the application, we always recommend focusing on adoption. Fortunately, Haag Wonen recognized the importance of this. They independently developed an e-learning module within their own app, the Haag Wonen Academy.
Employees can complete this 20- to 30-minute training at their convenience and get started with Teams Phone immediately. Through a train-the-trainer approach, the contact center employees were trained to use the Anywhere365 environment. The functionalities remained largely the same, although there are plans to expand these in the future. Peter noted, “Everyone was already calling online via Skype, so the transition wasn’t that big, which made it easier!”
The solution has now been in use for several months. “We’ve received positive feedback on the transition, with minimal downtime. We’ve had few issues or complaints. The contact center experienced a few more challenges, but these were always resolved promptly.” There is already considerable thought being given to potential next steps and further developments, so there’s still plenty to look forward to.
At Haag Wonen, a per-user pricing model was chosen, a specific request from the corporation. Peter explained: “As an organization, you want to purchase as many all-inclusive services as possible. You don’t want to pay extra for additional features, be locked into annual licenses when someone only works for a few months, or have to buy 10 extra licenses just because one new employee puts you over your package limit. We work on many projects where people may only work with us for a few months. Easy scalability was therefore a must for us.”
“We see Teams Phone as a stepping stone, or perhaps better said, the foundation of communication. We are in full development mode and want to shape our communication in a way that fits our organization. This is a strong start, but there’s always more to desire. For instance, we’d like to integrate the web agent into Teams. Integrating social channels is also something we’ll explore in the future, but we’ll approach this step by step,” said Peter.
A strong start for a hybrid working environment. Haag Wonen comes across as an ambitious and forward-thinking organization. Benno added: “We see ourselves as ‘smart followers.’ We don’t always have the latest technology, but we follow the market and certainly aren’t standing still. The foundation for hybrid working has been in place with us for some time, but how we’ll shape it further will become clearer in the near future.”
Peter continued: “We want to work anytime, anywhere, anyplace, on any device. We’re gradually building this out, with Teams being an important building block. We want to collaborate with Interstellar to shape hybrid working. This, of course, involves more than just providing telephony. It’s exciting to brainstorm and plan for the future together.”
Benno: “We’ve consciously taken these steps with you. When you’ve had a relationship for years, you don’t suddenly take the next step with another partner. Of course, things can always improve, but we enjoy challenging each other in this. We have a strong, trusting relationship.” Peter added: “For us, it’s important to focus on efficiency, and that’s something we really align on. Additionally, cost savings and availability are crucial to us, and we’ll continue to discuss these with each other.”
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