South African fintech leader Payfast by Network upgrades to Yeastar's Cloud PBX with DSL Telecom - gaining integrated ticketing, real-time insights, and SLA accountability.

As one of  South Africa's top online payment platforms, Payfast supports tens of thousands of merchants with seamless, secure transactions. With a growing customer base and high support volumes, their team needed a communication system that could scale, integrate, and offer instant visibility.

Before partnering with DSL Telecom, Payfast's legacy phone system created a number of operational roadblocks:

1. No Ticketing Integration
Calls weren't linked to their helpdesk tool, forcing agents to manually create tickets, slowing response times, and causing data gaps.

2. No Call Categorisation
Seven support departments shared the same inbound flow, but with no way to track or classify call reasons, decision-making lacked data.

Payfast worked with DSL Telecom to implement Yeastar's P-Series Cloud PBX, purpose-built for support teams that need visibility, efficiency, and flexibility.

Seamless Migration To The Cloud

DSL Telecom moved Payfast's infrastructure to Yeastar Cloud PBX, activating enterprise-grade call centre features and scalability.

Direct Integration With Zoho Desk
Incoming calls now automatically link to existing or new tickets in Zoho Desk, giving agents immediate context and reducing manual work.

Custom Call Disposition Tags
Using Yeastar's Linkus app, agents now tag calls with predefined reasons like ''Password Reset'' or ''Refund'', providing actionable data on support trends.

Advanced Reporting With Zoho Analytics
Call data is pulled from the PBX, transformed with custom queries, and visualised in real-time dashboards. Payfast now tracks:

• Call volumes by department
• SLA compliance metrics
• Agent productivity
• Call categories and frequency

Since migrating to Yeastar's Cloud PBX, Payfast has gained the visibility, control, and agility needed to deliver world-class customer support. From ticketing integration to live dashboards, every element of their new system is built for scale.

Let DSL Telecom help you implement Yeastar Cloud PBX - complete with Zoho integrations, dashboards, and real-time monitoring.

'' Working with DSL Telecom has been a great experience. Their team is professional, responsive, and consistently delivers quality results. We're happy with the service and look forward to continuing our relationship.'' ~ Ashley Parkes - Operations Manager at Payfast.

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The Drostdy Hotel, a historic landmark in Graaff-Reinet, was built in 1804 by architect Louis Thibault as the magistrate's residence. A major refurbishment in 2012 by the South African College for Tourism transformed the property into a prestigious 5-star establishment while preserving its heritage. Today, the hotel has relied on DSL Telecom as its communications partner since 2014.

Prior to the hotel's 2012 upgrade, they depended on a legacy PBX system with no service-level agreement in place. The analogue solution was difficult to manage, lacked flexibility, and did not integrate with the hotel's property management system (PMS). To streamline operations, improve efficiency, and provide a better experience for both guests and staff, the hotel needed to transition to a modern VoIP-based solution with native PMS integration.

In 2014, DSL Telecom implemented the Yeastar U500 PBX Phone System, upgrading the Drostday Hotel from a traditional analogue PBX to a modern (at the time), feature-rich solution tailored to their communication needs. In 2023, the PBX was upgraded to the P-Series PBX, which has native integration to the hotel PMS system, specifically designed for hotels to handle both internal calls and external communication needs, enabling guests to seamlessly make and receive calls within the hotel - such as contacting room service, reception, or other departments - as well as connect with external lines.

• Seamless PMS Integration: Connects directly with the hotel's property management system, allowing reception staff to manage calls and bookings efficiently through the operator panel.
• Hardware Upgrade in 2024: New hotel room phones were installed in guest rooms and at reception, improving communication between guests and staff while enhancing reliability.

• Responsive, Reliable Support
  DSL Telecom provides dedicated, hands-on support with a consistent point of contact, ensuring the hotel always has expert assistance available.
• Increased Security 
  Migrating to Yeastar's P-Series PBX has given the hotel a more secure communication environment, safeguarding calls and sensitive information.
• Operational Efficiency
  PMS integration streamlines reception operations, reducing manual processes and improving the guest experience.
• Future-Proofed Communication
  With a scalable, enterprise-grade platform in place, the Drostdy Hotel is well-prepared to adapt as communication needs evolve.

Upgrading to the Yeastar P-Series PBX has given the Drostdy Hotel a secure, reliable, and fully integrated communication platform. With DSL Telecom managing the deployment and ongoing support, the hotel can now deliver seamless guest and team communication while future-proofing its operations.

Don't let legacy communication systems hold your business back. Upgrading to the Yeastar P-Series PBX with DSL Telecom ensures a modern, scalable platform that streamlines operations, improves efficiency, and provides expert support whenever you need it.

'' DSL Telecom has consistently delivered outstanding service, ensuring our communication systems run smoothly and efficiently. Their team is responsive, professional, and always available to provide expert support when needed. We value their reliable partnership in keeping our hotel operations seamless. '' ~ Eloise Botha, Finance Manager at The Drostdy Hotel.

In a recent interview, Dean Schreuder, founder and MD of DSL Telecom joined an insightful discussion with Yeastar. Representing Yeastar were Jason New, Senior Training Instructor, Shirley Xie, Head Of Marketing and Elly Cai, Country Manager for Yeastar South Africa.

In this blog post, we'll explore the key points from the interview including the long-standing partnership between Yeastar and DSL Telecom and gain deeper insight into Yeastar's Cloud PBX offering and the evolving Cloud PBX market.

Yeastar: Can you provide a brief overview of DSL Telecom and how long you've been a Yeastar partner for?

Dean: Yeah, our company, DSL Telecom, we're a company based in Cape Town, South Africa, and we offer cloud-based services to business customers in South Africa predominantly, but also internationally. We've been in business for 15 years and we've been a Yeastar partner for around 13 years. We sell Cloud PBX Voice over IP services to companies, as well as connectivity: LTE, Fibre-To-The-Home, Fibre-To-The Business - these kinds of services.

Yeastar: What are your thoughts on Yeastar's progress?

Dean: Those first on-site PBX's were important because we could mix a fixed line with a better Voice over IP, give customers a taste, and obviously offer them an IP-based solution on their network. As the internet has got faster in South Africa, Yeastar's products have evolved as our needs have. If I fast forward to today, we're pretty much predominantly selling Cloud PBX.

Internet is a lot faster here. Also cloud adoption is a lot faster in South Africa. People understand paying for software as a service, and Yeastar's products have kept up with the market's requirements, actually kept ahead of them. Now, I feel it's one of the top platforms available in South Africa

Yeastar: What industry do most of your client base come from?

Dean: We service a whole range of customers - a lot a people in healthcare, services and we've got some hotels that are on our books, and anywhere from real estate to manufacturing.

Yeastar: What factors contribute to your preference for Yeastar over other options in the market?

Dean: I like Yeastar because it allows us to continue offering transparent, contract-free services, and on top of that, amazing security. But those are the things I like most about the Yeastar product, and I think that's what customers are attracted to. If I can't go on your website and get a fair understanding of what I'm going to pay within 10 to 15 minutes, I'll lose interest, and I think customers do as well.

Yeastar: Since collaborating with Yeastar, what positive changes has the collaboration with Yeastar brought to DSL Telecom?

Dean: It's hard to pinpoint a single thing, but two big changes for us were one, when we moved onto our own turnkey cloud solution. I felt like we were able to mobilise PBX's a lot faster. We were able to manage and change them better for customers, so they got a better end experience. I think that was a big turning point when we moved to our own turnkey. We've got quite a few extensions on there now, and we're growing rapidly.

A second great thing for us is being a Zoho partner. We found a lot of people moving to a CRM system, had a requirement to talk about telephony and collaboration tools etc, and communication.

Naturally, we had a lot of conversations coming out from our Zoho customers that the demand is so high. They wanted a telephony solution that could integrate into their Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk and other applications and Yeastar was very fast to market with the integration to these platforms.

We had a first-to-market advantage, I feel like we have a couple of first-to-market advantages. First IP PBX, then cloud-based with Linkus mobility, and then obviously the Zoho CRM integration with Yeastar Cloud PBX.

Those two things were really great because we had a captive market for Zoho customers, and we moved a lot of them over to Yeastar PBX. 

Yeastar: How do your perceive the Cloud PBX market?

Dean: I definitely see the Cloud PBX market growing. There's still a lot of people sitting on legacy systems and the nice thing in South Africa is the internet has moved to a point where we can support Cloud PBX even over mobile telephone networks. People are now used to paying for software as a service, where 10 years ago, people wanted to buy PBX and pay cash for it or go on some kind of finance rental or asset financing with the bank, and over time, as we've seen not just with Yeastar software as a service and our offering, but other products like the Zoho software as a service and others, people are used to that now.

Yeastar: Could you kindly share some of the most effective marketing methods you have employed?

Dean: I'm a conversion guy. I'm a lead-generation guy. Luckily, I've been focussed on generating leads through digital platforms for many years. We've got a lot of strong capabilities. We actually offer lead-generation services to some of our customers. It's not on our website, but it's a need-to-know basis. It's a unique service that we offer.

Our success has been going on to digital platforms and generating leads for our team, inbound leads, and we hand those over to our sales team. We've collaborated with some of our partners, and they've subsidised the cost of that lead acquisition and we've reciprocated by closing good business, so those partnerships have worked well.

Yeastar: How has the Yeastar Partner Program been beneficial for your team?

Dean: I think it's great. I think all the resources that are provided are fantastic, especially the certification, so I can get my team certified in the Yeastar products.

It's important that they know how to configure the systems correctly and apply the right security, so the certifications and resources have been very valuable. Then I'd say the support from the Yeastar team, it's incomparable and from a technical support point of view, fantastic.