CTI Solutions

Mortgage Industry CTI
A large mortgage company relied heavily on an Internet sales vendor to deliver calls to the mortgage company's sales reps. They believed their vendor was charging for more calls than were actually taken by their sales reps, but their lack of system-wide call reporting made it difficult to know for sure. They also wanted to improve agent efficiency by routing calls more efficiently.

PSS deployed a Genesys inbound CTI solution with full reporting capabilities across the customer's six branch offices, giving them a comprehensive view of company-wide call volume and other statistics necessary to manage their call center operations. The intelligent inbound call routing was integrated to the customer's existing NEC NEAX IP-PBX systems in each branch, allowing them to route inbound calls quickly and efficiently to the most qualified sales reps across multiple locations.

For the agents PSS deployed the Genesys Desktop thin-client application, integrated to both their NEC IP-PBX systems and their home-grown CRM application. This reduced stress and increased efficiency by giving the agents "one view" at the desktop for all of their tasks. Combined with the Inbound CTI solution, this gave the customer a fully integrated IP-Based Virtual Contact Center spanning resources in six physical locations.

Government CTI
The unemployment services division for a large western state wisely foresaw a looming recession and expected a sharp increase in unemployment claims. This would put significant strain on their call center infrastructure, and they needed to expand capacity and increase efficiency so they could properly serve their constituents.

One of the projects PSS tackled for them was a version upgrade and overall tune-up of their existing Genesys CTI infrastructure. PSS analyzed traffic between the state's two call center sites and determined that the number of voice trunks between the sites was a bottleneck that caused cascading effects on routing efficiency at each site when the trunks were all busy.

To optimize the system PSS increased the number of voice trunks connecting the two sites and modified the call routing strategies so calls could be routed to available agents at either site. Now, as traffic spikes hit each call center throughout the day, new calls will automatically overflow to the other site so calls don't get queued at one site while agents are sitting idle at the other. This "tune up" approach allowed the state to save taxpayers money by utilizing existing resources more efficiently. The system allows the state's contact center to handle more calls without having to hire additional agents.

Utility CTI Overlay
You don't always have to start from scratch to deploy a CTI solution that meets your needs. A utility in the Southeast had two call center sites, each with two Nortel IVR systems and two Avaya PBX systems. They used their Avaya Definity PBX systems for all of their call routing, but any time a call was transferred between sites the data associated with the call could not follow it.

PSS was able to provide a CTI overlay solution that leveraged the customer's existing IVR infrastructure and PBX routing strategies. We added Genesys I-Servers that integrated to their Nortel IVR systems and Genesys T-Servers that integrated to their Avaya PBX systems. PSS built a custom .NET desktop for their agents that tied into the Genesys framework and integrated to their back office application. Now, when their Avaya PBX routes a call to an agent, we deliver the associated data directly to the CTI desktop regardless of location and pop a screen to their back office application.

Utility CTI
A utility hired PSS to design and deploy a replacement for their existing "one off" CTI solution. They wanted a stable platform that could support their existing IVR, PBX, and back office systems today, yet be flexible enough to accommodate future contact center growth at their own pace.

In order to fully understand the system requirements, PSS conducted a Discovery Workshop that brought together all of the Utility's stakeholders with a PSS team of CTI experts. The Discovery process helps the participants uncover detailed business and technical requirements which are then prioritized against business objectives.

Based on these requirements and priorities, PSS developed a CTI architecture and deployment strategy for the utility. This system included:

A Genesys Inbound voice solution provided intelligent IVR call handling based on real time statistical data.
SAP integration to provide CTI screen pops to agents based on data collected during the inbound IVR segment of the call
The ability to pass CTI data along with calls that are transferred
A Genesys Outbound solution so they can initiate automated calling campaigns that inform customers of planned utility outages in their area
High Availability components to ensure maximum uptime and simplify disaster recovery.

Once this system was deployed the Utility's contact center agents enjoyed higher productivity because it reduced the need to duplicate tasks. It also improved overall contact center efficiency by boosting productivity across previously separate business functions. As call volume increased, this improved productivity eliminated the need to hire additional agents to handle the work load.

Over the top CTI support
A customer who upgraded their CTI environment was having issues communicating with the CTI server. PSS determined that the issue was with the CTI interface code - the driver and/or the C-call library provided by the CTI vendor.

PSS attempted to resolve the problem by performing all of the steps recommended by the CTI vendor, including a change out of the operating system and hard drives. It didn't work. Both PSS and the CTI vendor invested many hours trying to solve the problem while the customer's system was out of service.

Eventually, PSS circled back to the CTI vendor's C-code. Though it wasn’t its responsibility, PSS support began debugging the code and corrected several errors. We provided the fixes back to the CTI vendor and installed the modified C library for the customer. It worked perfectly and the system was put back onto operation. By taking responsibility for solving the customer's problem, PSS avoided any finger-pointing between vendors and kept everyone's focus on resolving the support issue.