Balance
Balance

How Aircall became ‘the backbone’ of Balance VA’s business

How Aircall became ‘the backbone’ of Balance VA’s business

Region

UKI

Use case

SalesSupport

Integration

Share

What does it look like when a phone system isn’t just part of a business, but is the entire backbone?

Without a reliable VOIP service, the teams are unable to function, clients are left unhappy, and revenue is lost. That’s why it’s absolutely vital to get it right.

A toolkit for happiness

Balance is a remote reception service, built specifically for chiropractors. Bella Shackleton, the Founder, identified a need for a dedicated service to help ease the burden on clinicians and their staff by improving the way new and existing patients book their appointments on the phone, saving time and focus in-clinic for the experience patients receive.

The company has experienced considerable growth since forming over four years ago, now serving more than 90 clinics. Bella’s time is taken up the same way as many founders of companies on the rise: hands-on, and involved in almost every area of the business. The company phone system is no different, particularly as it has a direct impact on what Bella sees as the driving force behind Balance’s mission:

“Client happiness – and client success – is always our number one priority. If our clients are happy with our service, that inspires me to drive the business forward. To deliver that, I need to make sure my team is happy, too. I need to ensure they have access to the right tools, and can use them in a way to do the job well. If we can deliver on both fronts, everyone’s a winner.”

Focusing on connectivity and simplicity

So what does delivering that happiness look like in real terms? 

“For our clients, it means that their patients have been dealt with in a positive way; they’re booked in smoothly, and we’ve adhered to the client’s booking rules and procedures”, says Bella.

“For our team, it’s all about the tools. If the phone system is simple to use, and functioning well, then they’ve got the best chance to complete their work to the highest possible standard. It’s also about helping them ensure they can work in a way that suits everyone – if they’re working remotely, can they connect easily? That’s what we’re there to facilitate.”

However, with teams based in the UK and South Africa, connectivity is sometimes at a premium. And previous phone systems haven’t always been as simple to use as Bella would have hoped.  

Booking patients in, ensuring staff in practice have the right information they need – and at the right time – to answer any queries, all of this can cause confusion if not executed correctly. The individual processes of each clinic demand a lot of flexibility from the team. This means the phone system needs to be working at optimum levels at all times, because the job can be difficult enough without experiencing any unexpected technical issues. 

Freeing up time and resource

Before adopting Aircall, manual admin was a huge drain on resources. The team had to write down the last four digits of each phone number after every call they took, as well as write a note that indicated the sentiment of the conversation, before entering it into a Google form. This process directly impacted revenue: if the form wasn’t completed, the call wouldn’t be logged, and Balance wouldn’t charge for it. Something had to change.

“The phone system we used previously had no way of tagging calls, which caused us a lot of problems when it came to analysing the month’s performance. We needed better visibility: which calls were rearranged, or cancelled? And what was the purpose or outcome of the call? Now, we can tag calls with this information, and it makes reporting, reviewing and forward planning much easier.”

Another big point of contention was the user experience for those using the previous system. In Bella’s words, that solution was “boring and dated – it just wasn’t nice to look at, and wasn’t a pleasant experience to use. With Aircall, it’s the opposite. The dashboard looks great, and feels far more modern.”

Building a business on Aircall

A key feature in solving these issues is a simple one: Aircall’s integration with Hubspot. Balance uses the Hubspot integration to track all its calls, so as soon as a call is answered it’s logged there and the necessary next steps regarding client or patient follow up are taken. 

Bella’s team can tag and make notes on the call in real time, as well as automating a selection of them, too, using the Power Dialer. It means this integration is now an integral part of how the business operates; without it, the team’s day-to-day life would look wildly different.

That goes for Aircall as a whole, too. As Director, Oliver Codrington, puts it:

“For Balance, Aircall is not just a tool to manage outbound or inbound calls. We’re a call center. It’s not simply a question of ‘Is Aircall useful, and how?’ – Balance is actually more of an example of what it looks like to build a business on Aircall. In short, it’s the backbone of our business.”

Ready to build better conversations?

Aircall runs on the device you're using right now.