Case Study: 6 Degrees


Shout revolutionised the 6 Degrees Least Cost Routing service, reducing lengthy configuration times and faulty call handling.

6 Degrees is an established owner of a resilient, multi-site switch network which delivers industry leading inbound and outbound voice services. Security and protection of these services is guaranteed by their unique business continuity product, Live Number, which allows customers to continue to make and receive calls, whatever the circumstances.

Headquartered in London, they operate a carrier neutral business model and with direct access to all major telecom networks, and have over 10 years experience of delivering tangible benefits to their customers. Those customers include large multi-national companies and are particularly strong in Finance, Legal and Research sectors where resilience and availability are paramount.

If businesses engage directly with a single carrier, the service can be remote, burdensome and expensive. A 6 Degrees solution allows their customers access to a range of carriers, but consolidated into one supplier relationship.

Prior to engaging with Shout Telecom the Least Cost Routing (LCR) service they provided relied on manual routing plans which required loading to the 6 Degrees management system every month from the information each carrier provided. Overall, only 800 number prefixes were available automatically so the rest of the information had to be loaded manually. Because the information from each carrier came in very different formats and included details of every destination available to each carrier and the cost of each part of the journey, the task was always extremely time-consuming.

6 Degrees had acquired assets from a company of a solution that had been provided by Shout Telecoms. They engaged with Shout Telecoms to develop a rate mediation solution based on 100,000 number prefixes provided by the carriers. They created software for the desktop which allows 6 Degrees to import rates from each carrier into a common format for upload to the system and which includes all the different rates based on parameters such as time of day and day of week.

The Operations Director at 6 Degrees, said "The difference to our service has been amazing – fault calls dropped significantly and continue to drop, plus we have seen an increase in revenues and gained new customers".

Due to the success of the LCR project, 6 Degrees went on to work with Shout Telecoms on their innovative Live Number product which builds resilience and flexibility into the voice system.

Live Number Solution

For most businesses it is imperative that voice communication is maintained across all stakeholder groups such as employees, partners, suppliers and customers in the event of an emergency. The service 6 Degrees wanted to offer its customers wasn't available in a single solution from any other supplier and it required bespoke development.

Shout Telecom developed a complete solution which allows 6 Degrees customers to manage their voice calls for themselves – either as system managers, or employees; where they receive inbound calls, who receives them, control of the system in an emergency with no loss of service, call recording and a voice back up system.

The Operations Director for 6 degrees said, "It's much easier to do business with our customers as a result of Shout's offer which is an intuitive, attractive tool which does it all and more".

As a result of the deployment of Shout Telecom's software, 6 Degrees' customers benefit from quality of service and easy to use management tools.

6 Degrees invested in this technology because they believe customers expect more than just cheap minutes. As a result they have experienced stronger customer relationships and reduced churn due to delivery of a superior service.

The Operations Director concluded "We have a great affinity with Shout, they are easy to deal with, extremely responsive, don't let us down and most importantly, take the pain away"

Business Challenges
  • Manual routing plans
  • Too many different formats from Carriers
  • No single supplier could provide a turnkey resilient and flexible voice solution
Keys to Success
  • Intuitive customer interface
  • Ability to deliver a bespoke solution to specification
  • Dedicated and easy to work with
Project Outcome
  • Better service for customers
  • Reduced customer churn
  • Improved revenue

Stand out quotations

"We have a great affinity with Shout, they are easy to deal with, extremely responsive, don't let us down and most importantly, take the pain away"

"It's much easier to do business with our customers as a result of Shout's offer which is an intuitive, attractive tool which does it all and more"

"The difference to our service has been amazing – faulty calls dropped significantly and continue to drop, plus we have seen an increase in revenues and gained new customers"