Case Study

Dualtron provides cashless electronic point of sale (epos) and payment systems, and cash handling systems for counting, sorting and checking money.

It has more than 3,000 systems in its portfolio, including banknote sorters, counterfeit detectors and coin deposit systems. The Dublin-based company provides technical support with a team of 11 field-based staff who use voice, data and text services constantly. With the motto, ‘You can count on Dualtron’, the company prides itself on its reputation for rapidly resolving customer issues. This is reflected in the company’s win in the Services category at the SFA National Small Business Awards 2017, having been shortlisted before in 2012 and 2015. “We have 25-plus years of unbroken maintenance contracts with some of our banking customers because we’re reliable and give good service. To maintain those relationships, you’ve to continually reinvent the service and do things better all the time,” says Dave Byrne, co-founder and managing director of Dualtron.

Dependable communication is a must for Dualtron to maintain this high standard of customer service. “A continuously available cashless payment system is mission-critical for our customers, so they are able to serve food and charge for it. When issues are reported to us, they expect a fast response and resolution. Whatever communications provider we chose needed to give fast, reliable communications on a continual basis,” says Byrne.

Solution

To meet its needs, Dualtron chose Three to provide a fast, reliable service on a corporate plan for 15 mobile voice and 10 mobile broadband connections. “Three listened, understood what we needed and came up with a credible plan which made the decision very easy for us. Everything was very professional, so we had no hesitation in signing the deal with Three. The big thing for us is communication, and we found Three was very responsive. Since the change to Three, the service has been very good and we have had excellent customer support from our account manager,” says Dave Byrne.

Dualtron manages its mobile workforce with a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. This system assigns service calls over 2G/3G or 4G to the nearest field engineer’s smartphone, with details such as the customer location, the contact person, the nature and urgency of the problem. Once the issue has been resolved, the customer signs the smartphone screen and the documentation is sent over the network to the CRM. Dualtron’s sales team also use a cloudbased system, which they access on their mobiles and laptops. When they need to create, edit or share documents on-the-go, their Three mobiles provide a very quick hotspot solution. “Obviously, having reliable 4G makes a big, big difference,” comments Dave Byrne.

Results

Three’s reliable mobile broadband has allowed Dualtron to go beyond their customers’ expectations. One corporate catering site was all set for a grand launch to staff, but its physical broadband connection wasn’t working on the day. Thinking quickly, a Dualtron engineer created a wireless hotspot and connected over the Three network to ensure the system went live without a hitch. “The 4G service from Three was so good that there were no interruptions. Now, we always provide a mobile connectivity option for new customer sites as a contingency,” comments Dave Byrne.

Fast technical support and a wide choice of smartphones are important to Dualtron. Dualtron’s app-based cashless payment system runs on three smartphone operating systems: Android, IOS and Windows. The team needs access to a range of smartphones for testing, and Three’s wide range also helps Dualtron showcase its system to customers. Dave Byrne has been impressed with the high quality and reliability of the service. “There have been no dropped calls or areas where there has been no coverage. We cover literally every town and village in Ireland, and in 99% of the places, we don’t have connectivity issues.”

He sees Three as almost an extension of the Dualtron team and part of its service. “When Three bring out new products and services, we’re always interested in seeing if that would allow us to provide a better or improved service to our own customers.”

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