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Apptix Improves Customer Contact Experience with inContact from UCN

TMCnews Featured Article


November 27, 2006

Apptix Improves Customer Contact Experience with inContact from UCN

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor


Apptix, an application service provider, provides over 13,000 organizations and 140,000 subscribers worldwide with critical on-demand messaging and collaboration services. The company made the strategic decision in 2005 that it would establish its customer service function as a competitive differentiator. This decision led to the selection of inContact from UCN (News - Alert) as its core Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) technology.

Apptix faced the challenge of an aging PBX (News - Alert), combined with the hunt-group call distribution capabilities and no reporting or statistical analysis. As such, Apptix was hampered in its vision to be the premier provider of on-demand messaging and collaboration services to the small and medium-sized business market. After rapid growth as a result of acquisitions, the customer service organization was spread across three states, with plans to spread into India. During peak periods, hold times for customers were averaging ten minutes.

In a statement on Monday, Lisa Williams, director of customer service and support said, “Customers were not satisfied. The PBX was not performing and I needed to eliminate one of our outsource vendors from providing full time customer support.” Williams was very far down the vendor selection process when her IP Services partner recommended UCN. “Unlike other vendor solutions we reviewed, inContact caught my eye. We selected inContact for its feature set, pricing and its hosting model.

Total deployment took only 35 days from planning to implementation, including the porting of inbound telephone numbers to UCN. Apptix was able to immediately improve customer contact experience during peak periods with the inContact Call Back feature. Instead of remaining on hold, customers are offered an automated call back option.

Williams went on to explain that automated customer quality surveys, real-time agent activity reports and call detail reports have helped the Apptix management team get their arms around the performance of their Customer Support operations. The company assigned dedicated toll free numbers to specific customer groups and enabled customers to select which solution they are calling about. As a result, Apptix can now see which solutions and which customer bases are generating the most calls.

Apptix was at a point where a change was critically necessary to maintain any competitive hope in its industry. Hold times averaging ten minutes are a sure way to encourage customers to look for solutions elsewhere.

In a global economy where your service deliverables can mean the difference between loyalty and deflection, companies have to be innovative in their approach to their customer service solutions. Apptix recognized this need and took the necessary steps to improve its offerings. Not only did inContact help to improve the customer contact experience, it also gave Apptix a monitoring and measuring tool that management can use to not only report on service deliverables, but also make better choices in product and service offerings in the future for more competitive advantage.

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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.







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