How Interstellar keeps service desk waits under 90 seconds with ROGER365.io

About

Interstellar is a Dutch managed service provider based in Delft, with the tagline Evolving IT around you. Around 750 people run IT for client organisations, from the workplace to the network. Its Unified Communication practice runs deep: in 2021 Interstellar acquired one of the leading Microsoft collaboration specialists and built it into here broad MSP portfolio. To round out Teams Phone and omnichannel contact center, Interstellar became one of the first ROGER365.io partners, and is now one of two ROGER365.io Elite Partners in the Netherlands, serving hundreds of customers. This case is about Interstellar using that expertise on its own desk.

The Challenges

Interstellar sells customer contact excellence to others, so its own service desk has to live up to the same standard. Before ROGER365.io, it did not. The support team, then operating as Felton, ran on separate telephony that gave no real-time insight, which made managing accessibility difficult. The exchange sat beside Microsoft Teams as a standalone app, with no live view of who was available or how many customers were waiting, and only limited reporting. Teams telephony was in use but not integrated, so the team missed the benefits of handling calls inside the Microsoft environment it already worked in. For an MSP in a fiercely competitive market, that gap mattered on three fronts at once: customer experience, the experience of its own people, and the efficiency it needs to hold service levels and healthy margins. Interstellar wanted one place to see availability, queues, and waiting customers, and to act on them, then bring the same playbook to its customers.

“Before ROGER365.io, we worked with separate telephony without real-time insight, which made managing accessibility quite difficult.” - Bryan Noll, Team Lead Managed Services, Interstellar

The Solution

Interstellar chose the ROGER365.io Contact Center, the platform it already delivers to its own customers, because it runs inside Microsoft Teams and could be shaped around the team's own processes. The change agents feel first is visibility. Everyone sees live availability, how many callers are in the queue, and who is busy or away, so colleagues jump in when lines build up without the team lead having to coordinate. Insights and Analytics turns that into management information: how many agents are needed at any moment, when to plan callbacks by priority, and how to keep accessibility high. In the call flow, a PowerFrame overflow steps in after one minute: if no one answers at the service desk, the call hunts a wider group, so a caller is rarely left waiting more than ninety seconds. An API to the ITSM tool (TOPdesk) recognises the caller and shows their person card, and a further integration surfaces their last ticket, so agents no longer ask for ticket numbers. Everything sits in one window, Microsoft Teams, and the setup scales, so new teams can get started as they are added.

The Results

The support desk now runs on live information instead of guesswork, and the wins land on three fronts at once. For employees, everyone sees availability, queue length, and who is busy in real time, so the team is self-sufficient: people step in when the queue grows, without being asked, which frees the lead from constant coordination. For customers, the PowerFrame overflow hunts a wider group after one minute, so a caller who dials the service desk is rarely kept waiting more than ninety seconds, and the ITSM integration recognises them and shows their last ticket, so there is no need to ask who is calling or what it concerns. For the business, Insights and Analytics lets Interstellar right-size staffing and plan callbacks by priority, which protects service levels and margins in a competitive MSP market. Everything runs in one Microsoft Teams window, the partnership with ROGER365.io keeps support lines short, and the setup scales on a predictable ROGER365.io model as the group grows.

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“My colleagues can see availability and how many people are in the queue themselves, so they jump in without being asked. These kinds of things should be standard, and ROGER365.io helps a lot with that.” - Bryan Noll, Team Lead Managed Services, Interstellar

Lessons Learned

Bryan's main lesson is to start from strategy, not from a box. Do not begin with we need a new telephone exchange and then hunt for a fix. Start from where the organisation wants to go with its modern workplace and AI, map the processes you actually run, and only then choose the partner and platform that fit, because ROGER365.io is flexible enough to be set up around them. Get that order right and you choose the right partner for the long term. As an MSP, Interstellar now takes the same lessons to its own customers.

The Future

Interstellar started on its service desks and plans to extend the same approach to other departments, including sales. The bigger move is AI. CTO Carlo Schaeffer is exploring AI transcription for the service organisation, so conversations are transcribed, actions and follow-ups are generated, and tickets logged in TOPdesk, automatically. For an MSP, that means a better customer experience, a lighter load for employees, and the efficiency to hold service levels and margins. Microsoft Teams stays the foundation, and Interstellar intends to bring every lesson to its customers.

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