Virtual Office Resource

Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) released its PureCloud Engage cloud-based contact center software in June of 2015. Since its initial release in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, and subsequent release in Europe the following September, the company has seen praise and won awards for its creation.

The latest client to adopt Engage is the Senior Housing Assistance Group (SHAG) Community Life Foundation. SHAG, which is based in Seattle, helps individuals find affordable senior housing throughout the state of Washington. In that effort, its contact center staff of four agents tackle approximately 7,000 calls every month that arrive in line with marketing campaigns SHAG initiates depending on its goals.

SHAG Customer Service Manager Chris Brooks spoke in a recent Interactive Intelligence print release about the link his organization’s marketing campaigns have made with Engage. Further, he spoke about the benefits he has seen because of that link.

“PureCloud Engage has enabled us to quickly and easily customize call flows so we can modify them based on each marketing campaign,” Brooks said. “This has helped us track the performance of each campaign so we can make changes to improve them.”

He also commented about how Engage allows SHAG employees to speak to customers and fellow employees at the same time:

“We love that we can use Engage to collaborate internally and share documents without ever placing the caller on hold,” Brooks continued. “If a caller has a question, the agent can quickly IM another employee to help field the caller’s question faster.”

If these benefits were not enough to impress the senior living assistance organization, it could look to the cost savings it has realized since adopting the software. SHAG has reportedly saved about 80 percent on its call center costs by eliminating its on-premise hardware and outsourcing fewer jobs for management of the call center network. Most call center management tasks can now be completed in-house.

Finally, SHAG has also begun using Engage for its workforce optimization capabilities. It has made it much easier for the group to schedule its staff members and create reports about company actions taken throughout each month. Brooks noted that all these features come as part of a single package, which was a strong selling point since other vendors SHAG considered would have required the use of multiple applications for the same result.

SHAG’s and Brooks’ future is expected to see further integration of its 26 offices with Engage. The organization plans to eliminate its present use of a separate telecom account and migrate all offices to Engage while also experimenting with social media functions and integration with a customer relationship management software.