Established more than 40 years ago, Caxton Legal represents the interests of people who are disadvantaged or on a low income when they come into contact with the law. Clients receive professional legal support for anything from family law and human rights issues to consumer credit law and bail support programs.
Caxton is an independent, not-for-profit, community organization that is registered as a charity. It is committed to achieving the best possible legal outcomes by working with partners from the community, government, university, and private sectors.
The need for an agile, flexible system
For many years, staff at Caxton legal had relied on a legacy NEC key telephony system. The system was comprised of 10 incoming and 10 outgoing landlines, as well as a fleet of analogue desk handsets.
The organization had known for some time that the infrastructure needed to be replaced. However, the issue came to a head when the COVID-19 lockdowns hit in early 2020.
With all staff suddenly working from home, incoming calls were diverted to three mobile handsets through which staff had to triage requests and arrange support.
“We urgently required a new platform and closely examined a range of options on the market,” says Caxton’s Chief Operations Officer Damian Kelleher. “We simply could not handle the volume of incoming calls, and the productivity of our 65 staff and team of volunteers was suffering.”
Kelleher says the organization's reporting capabilities were also suffering. Call data could be captured, however it needed to be extensively customized which consumed a lot of staff time.
“As a not-for-profit, we need to report every quarter and finding a more efficient way to achieve this was very important,” she says.
An affordable, all-in-one solution
Kelleher spent time examining a range of alternative telephony systems available on the market. Working with the organization’s long-term technology partner FUJIFILM CodeBlue Australia (CodeBlue), they choose 8x8 to be their new provider.
“The 8x8 solution stood out for us because of the strong support offered by the company as well as very competitive pricing,” he says. “We signed an agreement in September 2020 and the new platform was fully operational by early January 2021.”
The new cloud-based solution comprises 63 X1 licenses for office staff, nine X2 licenses for the client services team, and five X4 licenses for supervisors who need to access analytics functions.
Staff make use of a mix of desktop clients and mobile apps to answer and transfer calls. There was also a requirement for some physical handsets in meeting rooms, so CodeBlue deployed a small number of digital PolyCom handsets.
“It was an advantage to work with CodeBlue as we already had a long-term relationship with them,” says Kelleher. “It also means that we now have a single point of contact for all our IT and telephony requirements.”
8x8 and CodeBlue worked closely with Caxton and provided in-depth user training to ensure staff understood the features of the new platform and were comfortable with answering and transferring calls.
Effortless communication, from anywhere
With the 8x8 platform now fully operational, the Caxton Legal team is enjoying some significant benefits. For example, incoming call queues are easily handled, even with some staff continuing to work from home, and outgoing calls can be made from a desktop or laptop PC or via the 8x8 mobile app. Also, Caxton’s supervisors appreciate the real-time view of call volumes, as well as metrics such as wait times and unanswered calls.
“The fact that 8x8 is a totally cloud-based solution also delivers us with benefits,” says Kelleher. “It means that there is no equipment in our offices that needs to be managed or maintained, which is great.”
He says the 8x8 platform has also been integrated with the organization’s client database. Staff members taking calls are able to easily gather and log details from new clients when they call, which streamlines the process of providing legal support.
“The new platform has also helped improve our reporting processes and reduced the time needed to produce quarterly reports,” he says.
Kelleher says the ongoing support provided by CodeBlue and 8x8 has been invaluable. “I am confident they will both be valuable technology partners for us for many years to come,” he concludes.
