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Outreach Process Partners (OPP) recently had a tight deadline to meet. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)--specifically its Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water--selected OPP to operate its Safe Drinking Water Hotline, one of the central features in ensuring safe drinking water for a large portion of America. While OPP was indeed well-suited to set up such a system, the terms of the EPA's agreement required OPP to set up that hotline, and have it ready for operations, in just under eight weeks.

That was when OPP turned to 8x8 (News - Alert) and its virtual contact center capabilities to provide the necessary infrastructure. OPP first called in consultant Heather Donnelly (News - Alert), who had fully 30 years of experience in project management, then set the task before her to find and set up a cloud-based VoIP call center option. Such an option would likely be the only real way to set up a fully-operational call center in such a short time as much of the infrastructure would already be in place. But given what would have been needed for such a call center--live agent support, interactive voice response (IVR) capability and rerouting a currently-owned toll free number to reach the call center in question--only one firm came immediately to mind, and that was 8x8.

Among 8x8's product offerings was the JumpStart service, specifically geared toward getting customers set up with a virtual call center in a very short span of time. With some companies, that particular time frame has been as little as three days. Thus, OPP set up four training sessions, and rapidly performed a series of testing functions: examining call flow, setting up IVR greetings, and testing for quality. Everything looked ready to go until an earlier-used contractor decided to take back the IVR greetings originally established. But a little tweaking, including the judicious use of a smartphone voice recorder and a Spanish language translator, got that last hurdle taken care of.

Perhaps even more impressive was that 8x8 could then help OPP bring in several previously unavailable enhancements, and do so at a decreased operating cost, including the Spanish translation of recorded greeting scripts and the option for callers to leave voicemail messages after hours, where previously voicemail messages could be left just during business hours.

It's hard to resist the prospect of not only getting more than was bargained for, but also getting that more at a reduced cost from the original proposition. That had to come as a welcome surprise, not only for OPP but also for the EPA as well. While every firm may not have this level of success, the possibility of that kind of success behooves most any firm looking to set up a virtual call center to consider 8x8 as the provider of the necessary infrastructure. Indeed, some firms will be better off owning the infrastructure outright, but for those who want hosting, 8x8 may be just what's needed to do the job.