Sovran Self Storage

Sovran Self Storage, Inc. is a fully integrated, self-administered, and self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) that acquires, manages, and constructs self storage properties. The company, which employs approximately 900 people, owns and/or operates over 280 self-storage facilities encompassing over 17 million square feet, making it one of the five largest self-storage companies in the United States. Sovran operates its stores under the trade name Uncle Bob’s Self Storage^® and serves over 125,000 customers in 21 states. The company was founded in 1982, with headquarters in Buffalo, New York.

“In this business, you have literally only seconds to answer an incoming call.”
— Randy Hillman, Customer Care Manager, Sovran Self Storage.

Sovran was faced with a telephone system that was difficult to use and prone to breaking down often, both of which cost the company a lot of business. Keeping pace with the company’s growth plans — which required tying together the home office with the retail stores seamlessly, thus permitting the stores to operate as if they were part of the corporate call center — would require a huge upgrade. The existing system was also costly to maintain since everything, including moves, adds, and changes, had to be handled by Sovran’s service provider partner. It was time for a change.

“We needed to increase the efficiency on answering calls quickly and also enhance customer service. People find self-storage solutions in the Yellow Pages most often, and they start dialing — if they don’t get a pickup right away, they quickly move onto the next number. We needed to eliminate those abandoned calls.”
— Randy Hillman, Customer Care Manager, Sovran Self Storage.

Impressed with the solution's rich feature set, ease of use and maintenance, scalability, and reliability, Sovran selected ShoreTel. In the summer of 2005, ShoreTel deployed four ShoreTel T1 Voice Switches, which provide higher density trunking using T-1 or PRI signaling, throughout the organization.  Several ShoreTel 120 Voice Switches support the company’s 40 ShoreTel IP and 90 analog telephones. With ShoreTel’s Contact Center being used for its 35-agent call center, customer service and response time have been vastly improved. Other benefits include:

• The percentage of calls answered has been brought up from the low 90s to 96.5 percent or better, increasing sales.
• Eliminating costly service calls saves a minimum of $20,000 a year on maintenance alone.
• ShoreTel Contact Center also allows Sovran to match its staff to levels of service, and gives agents more information than ever before with every incoming call, improving the customer experience.
• Employees spend less time playing phone tag and more time on critical tasks, thanks to the system's built-in integration with Microsoft^® Outlook^®, which provides presence information and integrated messaging.

“We’ve seen measurable improvements as a result of the ShoreTel implementation in the way of compliments from customers. That gets around and people start telling their friends about Sovran and Uncle Bob’s Self Storage.”
— Randy Hillman, Customer Care Manager, Sovran Self Storage.