It’s easy to point fingers when things go wrong, especially if you can point the blame on an auto attendant rather than a real switchboard operator. Parlance, a provider of speech-enabled call-routing solutions, takes the initiative to jump into action and help the customer solve the problem. Every Parlance employee, from company executives to service engineers, knows it’s a necessary responsibility to CONNECT THE CALLER. This company-wide philosophy, couple with Parlance’s robust Managed Services, have made all the difference for their many customers.
Below are a few examples illustrating Parlance’s successful efforts:
Case Study: Managed Service
In order to effectively route callers and offload standard requests from operators, Le Moyne College implemented an auto attendant through their existing voice mail system. The system greeted callers and asked them to select a department from several menu choices by pressing the corresponding number on the telephone keypad. Caller frustration, however, led to callers hanging up or pressing “0” to reach the operator.
Le Moyne began a new auto attendant search, concentrating on four separate vendors. Le Moyne College needed reliable telephony applications to connect its faculty, staff and department. Le Moyne decided on Parlance Corporation, seeing as it provided the most value for their investment, with a robust managed service offering including software, hardware, free upgrades and online tools. In a statement, Le Moyne College’s Director of Telecommunication, Bill Hurley, commented, “nameConnector connects about 4,500 callers per month, with most calls being directed to Admissions, Financial Aid, and the Bursar’s Offices in less time than our live operator could connect.”
Case Study: Employee Connections
The increasing number of patients and services offered at Arnot Ogden Medical Center resulted in higher call volumes to the already busy switchboard. The Medical Center discovered a large percentage of calls to the switchboard to be internal, or employees calling operators requesting transfers to co-workers and departments. Employees and medical staff dialing the main number from outside the hospital also needed a way to quickly connect.
Today Parlance’s auto attendant, nameConnector, Service offloads 13,000 calls per month from Arnot Ogden's switchboard, enabling operators to provide better and faster service to external callers. Employees are provided with immediate access to co-workers and departments from both inside and outside the hospital, dialing one number and speaking the name of their desired destination. Callers are connected in less than 12 seconds with a connection rate of more than 97 percent.
Case Study: 24/7 Call Support
SUNY Brockport is committed to providing callers with exceptional customer service and was looking to enhance the service level provided to callers, as well as streamline their existing voice network. Parlance’s auto attendant solution, nameConnector was the key to providing fast, easy, telephone connections to all callers before, during and after business hours, ensuring SUNY Brockport callers were connected 24/7. The College's calling community embraced the service.
Parlance and SUNY Brockport management monitor the service via customized Web reports summarizing nameConnector performance including: call volume by time of day, by line, by called number and the number of calls to a destination. The reports provided data to assist in determining what, if any, measures should be taken to improve caller connection rates across the organization.
As TMC’s (News - Alert) Susan Campbell wrote, the idea of delivering an auto attendant solution as a managed service came out of a Parlance’s partnership with a customer to ensure the system performed well over the life of its use. Speech solutions require significant amounts of tuning along the way to be sure they perform at an optimal level. As Parlance’s Marketing Director, Mark Bedard, stated, “A big strength of Parlance has always been that, as a small company, we are very nimble in meeting our customer’s needs. Many of the innovations, applications, and processes we have in place came about from us trying to help a customer address an issue they are having with their telephony environment.”
Jaclyn Allard is a TMCnet copy editor. She most recently worked on the production team at Juran Institute, a quality consulting firm producing its own training and marketing materials. Previously, she interned at Curbstone Press, a nonprofit publishing press in Willimantic, CT, and fulfilled the role of Editor-in-Chief for the literature and arts journal published by the University of Connecticut. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Jaclyn Allard