Narellan Pools was established in 1971 as a family owned business, making fibreglass pools in Sydney's outer west. The company has grown to become Australia's premier supplier and installer of fibreglass-reinforced resin pools, with manufacturing plants in New South Wales and Queensland supporting an extensive network of franchises. Narellan Pools also exports to Europe, Asia and the Pacific.

Business Challenges

Narellan Pools became a Delacon client in 2006, at a time when its franchise network had grown from a handful of local outlets into a nation-wide presence, and the company was facing the challenge of managing the telephony requirements of an interstate business. At the same time, both the business and the franchisees were demanding a much higher return-on-investment. In response, Narellan Pools identified the following goals:

Narellan's communication solution needed to meet strict budgetary requirements, while at the same time providing a level of flexibility suitable for an evolving business.

The Delacon Solution

Delacon was chosen from a number of competitors for two main reasons: its highly competitive pricing; and its ability to move the solution beyond a simple Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. To meet the client’s needs Delacon built an IVR solution that delivered the following features:

• Customised call reports that track each call made to Narellan’s 1300 and 1800 numbers, and report the outcome of that call (answered, unanswered or busy);

• Once the caller has entered his/ her postcode, the call can be routed to the nearest franchisee;

• Delacon’s voice to email service can take a message if a call remains unanswered after 30 seconds, or if the line is busy
• If a caller enters his/ her postcode but the call then goes unanswered, the system emails details of the call (together with any voicemail message that is left) directly to the franchisee nearest to the caller’s location;
• If a potential customer calls from a landline and hangs up without entering a postcode, the system uses that caller’s number to identify the franchisee nearest to the caller’s location, and emails that franchisee with details of the call.

As indicated by Narellan’s National Marketing Manager, Elizabeth Eftimovski, “The solution allowed us to track all calls that came in via our 1300 and 1800 numbers. This gave us a clear picture of the power of our advertising to generate enquiries through our phone channels."

Narellan Pools was also able to provide valuable reports to its franchise network. In particular, staff were able to see the numbers of all customers who hung up before leaving a message or speaking to someone, making a fantastic lead list and ultimately boosting sales

Adding a technical perspective, a spokesperson for Narellan’s IT team commented that “Delacon’s solution has integrated seamlessly with our IT systems. The fact that they host the infrastructure has reduced much of the strain on our resources, but we still have the ability to make critical administration changes as required.”

The Outcome

Narellan Pools has conclusively proved to both its management team and its franchise network that its marketing and advertising initiatives are generating leads via its telephone channels. The ease with which customers can now contact their nearest store has also increased customer satisfaction and increased the amount of sales leads generated by promotions. 

Narellan’s costs have been reduced due to the hosted nature of the solution and the reduced amount of time needed for staff to make changes and update the system.

Narellan Pools and Delacon are now working to streamline phone lead reporting further, as Narellan’s requirements evolve. In addition, the two businesses continue to collaborate to identify ways in which the functionality of the Delacon solution can be improved upon and expanded.