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Otay Water District Uses Call Automation to Improve Hosted Call Center Service

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

Utility company Otay Water District has deployed Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) Group Inc.'s all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center(TM) (CIC) to process hosted call center customer interactions more effectively and efficiently. 

Otay Water District has reported improved hosted call center customer service as a result of deploying CIC's call automation and unified communications functionality. California utility company distributes water to more than 206,000 ratepayers in San Diego County and uses CIC's outbound dialing, recording, and customer feedback survey applications.

Interactive Intelligence Group Inc., a global provider of contact center automation, unified communications, and business process automation software and services, offers unified IP business communications solutions that can be used on-premise or via the cloud. The services are ideal for industries such as financial services, insurance, outsourcers, collections, and utilities.

"CIC's automated and self-service applications, such as ACD, IVR and in-queue callback, have enabled us to maintain a 98 percent answer rate, while actually reducing staff levels," said Otay Water District's customer service manager, Andrea Carey, in a press release. "The Interactive Intelligence applications have enabled us to do things like send automated notifications to customers about late payments, high water usage, and changes to their accounts.”

Otay Water District has integrated CIC with its billing system to deliver information to agents via screen pops simultaneously with an incoming call. CIC gives the company's business users unified communications functionality for voicemail, presence management, unified messaging and desktop faxing. 

Otay Water District replaced an NEC PBX (News - Alert) with CIC in place of the legacy phone system. The company selected Interactive Intelligence over solutions from Cisco, NEC and ShoreTel.

"We needed a new communications system that supported voice over IP so we could consolidate infrastructure at our headquarters," said Otay Water District's CIO, Geoff Stevens, in a press release. "Because water is a commodity, however, strategically we needed a system that would give us competitive differentiation through superior customer service. We selected CIC because it gave us the widest array of applications, along with open software architecture for ease-of-customization and integration."

Otay Water District purchased CIC through Interactive Intelligence reseller, Advanced Call Processing (ACP), and with the help of consulting firm, Fandel Enterprises.