Municipalities from Seattle to Scotland rely on international temporary staffing company Labor Ready to get extra employees on the job in time each morning.
At the heart of the Seattle-based company’s 24/7customer service is Contactual (News - Alert) OnDemand Contact Center, a solution that allows Labor Ready to deliver personal service for clients across the globe from a single call center in Tacoma, WA.
Siobhan Hanna, the director of Labor Ready’s call center, pointed out in a Contactual case study that its clients need ready access to employees, during both routine times and unexpected or emergency situation. Contactual OnDemand enables the company to ramp up quickly with more employees for its clients as needed.
According to Hanna, before installing Contactual’s solution, customers could call in 24/7 but Labor Ready had no systematic way of handling call volume fluctuations. Calls went directly to the cell phones of branch managers and customer service representatives. This effectively kept those people on call round the clock. The company was thus experiencing high turnover in the field, with staff complaining that they were “never off.”
Labor Ready required a quick solution, and searched for one that was both Web-based system and that worked with the existing phone system. The company also wanted needed a vendor capable of meeting aggressive rollout goals.
Previously, Labor Ready used 94 different answering services, throughout its branch offices. Each of the services had varying levels of customer service and cost. Hanna said it was evident that a centralized call center solution was needed. The company tried to build such a solution but quickly learned that success would require more than just equipment.
Labor Ready identified the key requirements for a new system and searched for a one that would be easy to use and install and worked as efficiently as possible.
Contactual was able to meet all of Labor Ready’s requirements and provided the required attention to Labor Ready. The deal was signed in August, 2003, enabling Labor Ready to set up its call center operations and start routing
calls from branch offices in October. In 2005, Labor Ready’s call center was able to handle 1.1 million calls with only 52 agents.
Hanna said that Labor Ready was impressed with the smooth implementation process and the transparent change. The Contactual foundation enabled new levels of service, control and visibility. Labor Ready’s customers are now able to call any branch 24/7, 365 days a year. Also, if branch staff is unavailable or gone for the evening the calls roll over seamlessly to the call center where agents are ready to handle any issues.
Contactual’s solution is now a key part of Labor Ready’s customer relationship management. It has enabled the company to deliver on its promise of 24/7 service.
The call center solution assisted during the 2005 hurricane season when Labor Ready lost connection with many of its local branches. The corporate call center was able to field calls for these branches and coordinate jobs between customers and field personnel. Labor Ready could not have accomplished this without the centralized system.
The Contactual solution provides visibility of calling patterns and volume throughout the day, which is a great opportunity to provide much better service for customers. Thanks to Contactual, Labor Rady now gets much better rates on its toll free lines.
The Contactual Contact Center has also improved the quality-of-life for Labor Ready field employees. Hanna observed in the case study that it’s easier to hire qualified employees, and keep employees too, when they know they’re going to be able to sleep at night without being in call.
To learn more about Contactual OnDemand, please visit the Virtual Call Center channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by Contactual.
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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.
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