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A-Med Health Care, a specialty pharmacy providing advanced medications, infusions, supplies and services to patients living with complex conditions, is among the many companies realizing new operational efficiencies and cost savings through the deployment of Interactive Intelligence’s (News - Alert) Customer Interaction Center enterprise VoIP system.

 

According to a press release, the company decided to ditch its legacy Nortel (News - Alert) system because it didn’t deliver the features, functionality and scalability that it needed. By migrating to the all-software-based CIC platform, the company has been able to unify its phone and fax onto a single system and consolidate down to one service provider. In addition it is gaining new operational efficiencies through CIC’s ability to intelligently route phone calls and faxes to the right person, whether they are working in the office or remotely.

 

“CIC has enabled us to reduce operating costs and improve patient service,” said A-Med Health Care’s chief technology officer, Johnathan Huettner, in the release.

 

Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Huntington Beach, Calif., A-Med Health Care provides support for patients suffering from conditions such as Cystic Fibrosis, HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, organ transplants and paraplegia. 

 

In addition to SIP-based IP PBX (News - Alert) switching and IP fax, A-Med is using CIC for voice mail, presence management, interactive voice response, auto-attendant, unified messaging and call recording.

 

The CIC platform was developed for the contact center but after companies discover the advantages its advanced features and functionality, including intelligent multimedia routing and unified communications features, such as presence, can bring to their operations they decide to deploy it enterprise-wide. Currently A-Med is using CIC to support about 200 employees at its Huntington Beach office, including 40 customer service agents who assist patients with their pharmacy and medical supply needs.

 

“Our older system was maxed out and we needed a replacement that would cost-effectively grow with us, while enabling us to better serve patients and easily integrate with our own custom patient database,” Huettner said. The company is currently integrating CIC with its own internal customer support software for the purpose of improving customer service. This will enable screen pops on agent desktops with pertinent patient information.

 

A-Med reportedly compared solutions from leading vendors but ultimately selected CIC because of its rich feature-set and ease-of-use.

 

“We were impressed with CIC’s ability to handle calls effectively and intuitively,” Huettner said. “In addition, the total cost for a fully redundant CIC system was much lower than several of the competitive products we looked at.”

 

Interactive Intelligence reseller Advanced Call Processing sold the system to A-Med following hands-on demo. The demo allowed A-Med to view, configure and test the solution in its own environment and with its own users. ACP then went on to implement and provide first-line support for the solution.

 

“The demo was critical for us in the decision-making process, because we got to see CIC in action,” Huettner said. “It eliminated any concerns we might’ve had when making the purchase decision.”

 

A-Med plans to expand CIC to support additional sites as well as home-based sales representatives.

 

Interactive Intelligence has been pushing further into the insurance and healthcare verticals as of late: In December the company announced that FirstCare Health Plans, a managed care company jointly owned by Covenant Health Systems and Hendrick Health Systems, had deployed CIC to improve its customer service. The company is reportedly benefiting from the VoIP contact center solution’s intelligent multimedia routing capabilities, as well as its advanced quality monitoring, recording, and reporting features.