Background
Motorpoint is a used car supermarket that specializes in providing finance to customers. Husht were called in to help improve the acoustics in Motorpoint’s main call centre in Derby, through which hundreds of customers contact the company each day.
Problem
The Motorpoint call centre is situated in a large, open plan office that suffered from considerable reverberation. This would make speaking and listening to customers difficult, especially when the room was full of operatives. The ceilings in this roof space presented a challenge, as the roof is pitched, and services such as air conditioning are open rather than being covered by a suspended ceiling system. This meant that there was a lot of opportunity for sound to reverberate off the hard, flat ceiling as well as metal ducting. In addition, it meant that direct fit acoustic panels could not be used, as there was no suitable point to mount them.
Solution
Our solution was to use suspended baffles rather than panels. These are suspended vertically from the ceiling, and do not require a large amount of space for fitting, which makes them ideal for awkward ceilings that are not flat, or are already being used for services such as air conditioning. Baffles are double sided, which means they provide a large surface area to absorb and disrupt sound. In order to reflect Motorpoint’s branding, we used multiple shades of grey along with orange. In addition to the baffles, we also installed SoundHush printed panels. These acoustic panels can be printed with any design customers want, while still offering excellent acoustic properties.
Results
Motorpoint call centre staff are able to chat on the phone with customers without any reverberation problems, even when the room is busy with operatives. In addition, the space has been given a real cosmetic lift, with funky baffles concealing the ceiling services, and the inspirational printed panels giving the walls some character.
