Toshiba: PBX and IP NVR Centralizes Curry Automotive
October 08th, 2013
The current project is actually a two-fold project. It originally started when Curry bought a dealership from a company called Geiss Automall. They created a Hyundai-Subaru building right next door where their Toyota building was. They were actually building two dealerships on the same property and at one time they were actually moving out of the buildings.
Over last two years, we’ve moved their business development center, which is like a call center, from the Toyota over into the Hyundai building. We’ve been implementing a lot of voice over IP so their people can work on their phones through an A-LAN connection wherever they are, not dependent upon geography. We were able to take them from one building and move them to another building without any loss of service.
We’ve had to do a lot of temporary wiring, fiber runs to elongate their network, so that they have been open for business even though the dealership is under construction. Now that the dealership is actually about 99% finished, we’re going to move the PBX back in to the Toyota building. We’re also implementing a full NVR IP camera deployment there like we did in Hyundai.
Right now they have Curry Acura and Curry Chevrolet in Scarsdale, New York, which is down here by us. They also have Curry Honda, Curry Nissan, and Curry Honda-Nissan in Chickapee, Massachusetts, and their call center actually answers calls for all those dealerships. So when you call into any one of their dealerships, you get the main automated attendant and it says, “Thank you for calling Curry Acura. If you’d like service, press 2.” If you press 2 and if it says, “If this is a new service appointment, please press 1.” And that call now is within the Toshiba system gets transferred via IP across their E-LAN from that dealership to the BDC that is up in Yorktown in the Hyundai-Toyota facilities and is answered.
They have about 20 agents who answer calls for all their dealerships, not dependent upon geography. They centralize all their calls and all their software, and each one of those agents has access to IP cameras that are deployed at each one of their dealerships, so they can see if there are service writers in each one of the dealerships are available. They’re able to see, for example, that in Curry Acura, John and Mary are available, so they can transfer this customer down to them because they also have a seamless dial plan. They can call any one of their Curry dealerships, and they can speak to whoever they need to. From a service standpoint, they’re very centrally controlled.
So, if someone calls in saying, “I need to find John,” instead of doing an overhead page, they can actually nail down where he is visually or through the phone system, getting into contact with the manager — or, once they can see where they are or who they’re looking for, they can automatically intercom them just like they’re sitting next to them. It’s not a phone call; it’s just a four-digit extension that they dial.
At their Curry Chevrolet location, we’re doing the same thing. They’re not completely ripping it down, but they renovated it and we’ve done about 60 or 70% of all the network and phone wiring down there. On a smaller scale we’ll be doing all the network cameras, IP cameras, and NVRs, too. They’ll be able to access those NVRs via a mobile device or via a web browser anywhere on their network or from the outside.
We set them up with a Toshiba software called Surveillix which has a mobile client, and any one of their managers can view and identify anywhere in the dealership through their mobile device. They can go in and see who’s on the showroom floor. They can look at who’s out in the parking lot any time that the manager wants. It’s very cool and very good for management. So, in the middle of the night, if he gets a report of something going on at a dealership from the alarm company, he just picks up his iPhone, clicks on the Surveillix app, and boom. He now has 24-7 live coverage of what’s going on at his dealership. And then they can go back and look at recordings and pull up that information for law enforcement or whoever needs it.
In their Curry Hyundai building, we’ve put in a new Toshiba PBX. We’ve also implemented all IP NVR equipment from Toshiba. They have up to 20 high-definition cameras that record 24-7 for their interior and exterior property. We’re doing the same thing now for the Toyota building. We’re installing an NVR that’s going to have 8 terabytes of storage. All their cameras are going to be high definition Toshiba IP network cameras all within their own exterior housing. Both their interior and exterior have ruggedized exterior speakers, plus all their cameras are all within their own ruggedized, vandal-resistant housings.
At one of their other dealerships, Curry Nissan, they have cameras in the service bay. We record when the customer actually pulls down the driveway, pulls down into the service bay, and then there’s another camera outside when they park the vehicle. They have customers all the time who say, “Hey, that scratch wasn’t there before,” or, “I didn’t have a dent there.” And what they do is they go back in the DVR and they say, “This is what it is.”
It’s a constantly evolving account for us because it includes so many other things that we’re involved with. We usually just do telephony and that’s what we’re known for, but everything else that we do—IP and the network cameras and so on—all that is all-inclusive underneath our umbrella.
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