The City of Cullman, Ala.’s 13,000 residents and organizations are now fully connected, thanks to a business telephone system installed by Toshiba (News - Alert) America Information Systems, Inc. The city, which handles about 12,000 incoming calls per month, is expected to save $30,000 per year with the implementation of the Toshiba Strata CIX telephone system.
Installed by Southeastern Telephone of Birmingham, Ala., Cullman now has business telephone systems at city hall, the police station, and the fire department, as well as a connection at the CEDA building through an IP using buried cable. In addition to call management capabilities and the installation of 120 Toshiba telephones at the four locations, an auto attendant system will help to provide improved internal and external communication.
A centralized voicemail system will offer city employees an auto attendant, voice messaging and four-digit dialing between locations. With the addition of this new telephone system, incoming calls to Cullman will more rapidly reach the right contacts, decreasing their time and that of employees on a call. Meanwhile, voice menus designated for various departments will route calls directly to the appropriate individuals, eliminating the necessity for city employees to manually direct calls.
The addition of four-digit dialing between locations, as well as incoming calls ringing at multiple locations, will enable more citizens to be reached at the right departments without the call being routed to voicemail.
With the elimination of unused and redundant circuits and phone services, and the reduction in long-distance fees and call accounting capabilities, the city of Cullman will be able to achieve more than just a connected network.
“Thanks to Toshiba and Southeastern Telephone, we are able to significantly improve our telecommunications capabilities while saving more than $30,000 a year in telecom costs,” said Hunt.
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Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell