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Technology Case Study - Broker Assistance Limited: This case study illustrates how a major supplier to the insurance industry enhanced customer service and experienced significant growth through successfully implementing technology.

Key Elements : IVR, skills based routing, CTI, Unified Messaging, Media Blending, progressive dialling, SMS

Permission has been given by Inter-Tel to publish these case studies, however, the company detailed below is not to be contacted under any circumstances without the express permission of Inter-Tel.

Company : Broker Assistance Limited

When consistent growth, both financial and in terms of staffing levels, coincide with a number of significant contract wins, businesses can very quickly find themselves stretched often resulting in poor customer service. Find out how a leading insurance broker not only improved its customer service but continued to grow under similar circumstances simply by improving its communications infrastructure.

Customer Background : Broker Assistance Limited (BAL) is a motor claims management company specialising in providing high-quality claim management services to UK clients of insurance brokers, insurers and fleets.

Available 24/7, BAL personnel guide those involved in road traffic accidents through the claims process, helping them to deal with the situation effectively and efficiently. BAL offers a streamlined non-fault service and can also offer temporary vehicle replacement, uninsured loss recovery and vehicle repair, placing vehicles into its nationwide network of body shops.

The Business Challenge: with staffing levels of 80 agents and 45 back office staff struggling to meet the ever growing demand, the directors decided that further expansion was required by way of taking on a second office building adjacent to their existing premises to accommodate the projected growth.

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The incumbent telephone system was already at capacity and the lack of detailed management information was making call routing and staffing levels impossible to monitor. Other issues which were identified and required resolution included:

BAL wanted to expand its operation into an adjacent building ensuring that disaster recovery plans were in place.

BAL wished to reduce the number of lost/abandoned calls and route inbound calls to the right department and then to the agent with the appropriate skill level to deal with that call.

The ability to integrate customer databases with the Call Centre agents' phone and computer to deliver a fast and more efficient service.

Historically, every inbound call generated three to four calls out, which was constantly driving up the call charges and labour costs. Additionally, outbound calls were made during work hours and this proved an inefficient use of time.

A requirement of outbound automation utilising media blending technology to include SMS and progressive dialling functionality.

BAL also had depots in Nottingham and Runcorn and needed to link these sites to Warrington in the most cost-effective manner.

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The Solution : in order to address the issues highlighted Broker Assistance Limited approached each one in the following manner, implementing different applications to resolve each one.

• Disaster recovery: For maximum resilience, Two Axxess 512 systems with redundant processors and UPS backup were used, one in each building. The two systems were networked and linked with 60 voice channels. This solution ensured that either building could operate independently of the other.
• Skills based routing: BAL implemented an Interactive Voice Response solution and Skillset Manager software which enabled routing of inbound calls to the right department and then to the agent with the appropriate skill level to deal with that call.
• Reduce call handling time and incurred costs: market leading Computer Telephony Integration software, Adaptive Professional, gave BAL the ability to automatically screen-pop an inbound caller's details/database record on the call centre agent's computer screen along with the appropriate script or e-mail response dependent upon the nature of the incoming call or enquiry.
• Unified messaging and media blending: BAL automated its outbound calling activity by using agents with the appropriate skill-sets and linking database records with the information required to a dialling campaign using progressive dialling technology. This proactive customer service reduced the amount of inbound calls by 3000 month.
• Multi-site Voice over IP connectivity: BAL was able to link its new sites in Nottingham and Runcorn to Warrington utilising Voice over IP. The immediate impact of this was to significantly reduce call charges between sites.

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The Results : Prior to this new technology, the Contact Centre was receiving 11,500 calls per month, 30% of which simply could not be answered and were abandoned. The large proportion of these inbound calls were customers simply asking if their vehicles were now fixed.

Within one month of the new technology being implemented the amount of abandoned calls reduced from 30% in May to 3% in June. In turn this freed up additional time for the agents to proactively make outbound calls and SMS texts to the customers to inform them their vehicles were ready and arrange a collection time to suit.

"Once the implementation of our new contact centre telecoms and software applications technology was implemented in May 2006 by Inter-tel's reseller, the results were outstanding," said Steve Rigby, Operations Director, Broker Assistance Limited

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Technology Case Study - Automotive: The following case study illustrates how a car dealership has embraced multiple technologies to improve call handling efficiency and reduce costs.

Key Elements: Multi-Site, VoIP, Contact Centre Working using Callview, Remote Workers, Call Management, Call Recording, Auto-Attendant.

Permission has been given by Inter-Tel to publish these case studies, however, the company detailed below is not to be contacted under any circumstances without the express permission of Inter-Tel.

When you employ hundreds of staff across multiple sites around the country in a fast-paced sales environment you need to be sure everyone can communicate easily and effectively. Drastically reducing call charges by utilising the latest technology whilst enhancing customer service and bringing the company together, is very important in today's fast-paced business environment.

Company: Glyn Hopkin – Nissan Dealership

Customer Background: Glyn Hopkin is a large multi-site retailer of new and used cars and vans, for both Nissan and Fiat. The company prides itself on providing its customers with total commitment and customer care from the initial sale to after-sales. The company employs approximately 300 staff across 10 dealerships throughout the southeast of England. All of the sites originally had different telephone systems with no links between the sites and all were using BT standard rates for call charges.

 

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The Business Challenge: Glyn Hopkin wanted to improve its service to its existing customers requiring motor repairs and servicing whilst at the same time improving the effectiveness of its existing advertising campaigns. Another significant requirement was to reduce overall costs of both external and inter-site calls (the latter estimated to be approximately 35% of call spend). The overall control of the call management system and network administration needed to be organised centrally.

Other major factors for change included:

The improvement of call handling for sales enquiries.

The improvement of call handling for service bookings.

The Solution: working closely with a leading Inter-tel reseller, Glyn Hopkin installed the system with multi-site Voice over IP links using frame relay. The call management software, CallView, was also installed and both this and the system administration were achieved by using IP over the frame relay network.

The customer was also able to have ACD (Automatic Call distribution) with call routing and two-way recording over all the network nodes. One site was left with a smaller non-Inter-Tel system but this was still able to connect to the main Inter-Tel system using voice over IP. All other sites were connected for a fully transparent voice over IP network.

Least cost routing was provided using Cable & Wireless and the inter-site calls were now of no cost at all. The CallView system provides daily call billing reports by site and also on the returned lost calls to improve service and advertising effectiveness. Advertised numbers are all checked daily for customer response.

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Results: The Glyn Hopkin 10 site network is an ideal application for Voice over IP networking. The solution is already proving a success in terms of results and provides the following benefits to the customer:

Multi-site and IP telephony providing a completely transparent virtual solution. Now, making calls between sites is easy and the cost has been reduced to zero.

Remote workers can be integrated easily to provide out-of-hours call answering.

Call management provides details of billing and cost control and enables Glyn Hopkin to check the effectiveness of advertising and returned lost calls.

Two way recording enables monitoring of each site to check that customer responsiveness is consistent over the whole group.

Auto attendant routes service calls effectively without causing customer complaints.

Extensive savings in call charges have been achieved using least cost routing and the system is easily administered from head office.

The system can be easily upgraded in a service area to add Screen Popping to improve customer service.

Additionally, the service and repair centres have all improved by the use of auto attendants and there are plans to extend opening hours using remote workers as virtual extensions on ISP links as part of the main system.

“This system has reduced our telephone costs by approximately £30,000 per annum” says Vic Hopkin, Group Project Manager, Glyn Hopkin.

“The ability to route calls through our service departments has improved our response to customers. Inter-Tel's reseller project managed and implemented this solution in a very professional manner and I would thoroughly recommend them to any customer.” concluded Vic Hopkin.