In the days when businesses were beholden to old-fashioned copper wire-based telephone systems, a move, change or expansion of office facilities was just short of a nightmare, and a costly one at that. Fast-forward a few decades, and IP telephony has turned what was once a major undertaking into a smooth ride.
Credit Union of America (CUA), which today has 16 branches, built a new headquarters earlier this year in Wichita, Kansas. The company needed to move all its corporate and call center employees to the new location with as little downtime as possible. CUA is a user of Interactive Intelligence's all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center (CIC), and credits the solution with making the move – from a telecom standpoint, in any case – quick and easy, with no downtime at all.
“CIC's flexible, software-based architecture enabled us to move and set up 50 percent of our contact center staff in one day, then move the rest of our staff a few days later,” said Credit Union of America's senior vice president and chief information officer, Richard Logan, statement.
It's not the only instance in which the Interactive Intelligence solution's flexibility was a bonus for the company. Earlier this year CUA merged with First Choice Credit Union, moving all its users to CIC.
“We were able to quickly and easily add First Choice staff to CIC's automatic call distributor so members could continue getting support from the employees most familiar with their accounts,” said Logan, who noted that CUA has seen many other benefits from of CIC's unified communications features.
“CIC enables our employees to initiate calls directly from their email or contact lists,” Logan said.
Adding,“And they can make conference calls by simply dragging names into the desktop client's call control window. CIC's presence management feature has dramatically improved internal communications by enabling our staff to see the status of colleagues. Service has improved as well since employees can now avoid transferring customer calls to unavailable colleagues.”
CIC's distributed and remote site support has further benefitted CUA. Employees are able to simply
log in from wherever they are and work as they would at a central office. They have the same call control and presence management functionality, and their location is completely transparent to callers.
“As a credit union with multiple branch offices, this has had a huge impact on productivity and customer service,” said Logan.
Interactive Intelligence is a Platinum sponsor of ITEXPO West 2012. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO is the world’s premier IP communications event. Brandon Rowe,Solutions Marketing Manager, will be a keynote speaker at the event. For more information on IEXPO West 2012 click here.