California Water Company Improves Call Center Operations with Interactive Intelligence

Few industries need broad contact center functionality as much as utility companies, whose needs can spike and vary unexpectedly, and whose customer support centers are often called upon to handle emergencies. California-based Otay Water District is one such utility, and to better meet its needs, the company has deployed Interactive Intelligence's all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center(CIC), replacing an NEC PBX (News - Alert) legacy phone system that had reached the end of its life.

Since implementing CIC, the water company has reported improved customer service and increased operational efficiencies via better contact center automation and unified communications functionality across the entire organization. In addition, the utility is using CIC's capabilities for outbound dialing – particularly critical for any utility that may need to reach out to a large portion of its customers regularly – call recording and customer feedback survey applications, said Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) in a press release.

“CIC's automated and self-service applications, such as ACD, IVR and in-queue callback, have enabled us to maintain a 98 percent answer rate, while actually reducing staff levels,” said Andrea Carey, Otay Water District's customer service manager. “The Interactive Intelligence applications have enabled us to do things like send automated notifications to customers about late payments, high water usage, and changes to their accounts. We can also now monitor and record agent calls, then use automated feedback surveys to better target areas for improving service,” she noted.

Otay Water District has also integrated CIC with its billing system to deliver information to agents via screen pops simultaneous with an incoming call. CIC gives the company's business users unified communications functionality for voice mail, presence management, unified messaging and desktop faxing. Otay Water District is also putting a comprehensive disaster recovery plan using CIC into place. In case of an emergency, the water company will be able to quickly reach out to customers.