Make me happy - MediaOne's information services - Company Operations

Communications News, March, 1999

Use CTI to enhance customer satisfaction.

Responding to the intense proliferation of the Internet and use of computers in the home, MediaOne, a Denver, Colo.-based broadband services provider, is aggressively supplying homes with entertainment, communications, and information services through a single wire. MediaOne offers customers a wide range of enhanced services for their homes, including advanced analog and digital video, high-speed Internet access, and telephone service.

MediaOne was formed from a 1996 merger of US West Media Group and Continental Cablevision. In addition to combining companies and processes, MediaOne's biggest challenge after the merger was to continue providing and heightening customer service standards to the company's 5.1 million customers in 17 states while aggressively deploying new services around the country. MediaOne's call-center operations are geographically divided into six regions with more than 2,000 customer service representatives nationwide. Each region is responsible for specific lines of business and customer service in its designated area.

In 1996, the Northeast region consolidated 15 smaller call centers into the present three-site configuration with the main host location in Chelmsford, Mass., a suburb 25 miles outside of Boston. MediaOne selected Intecom as its telecommunications vendor to provide key business, technical, and customer service applications to help MediaOne achieve its goal of providing world-class customer service.

"We did a vendor evaluation and our major goal was to acquire an enterprise solution," says Steve Hackley, regional director of customer-care call centers for MediaOne's Northeast region. "Intecom provided that and advanced applications such as skills-based routing."

I WILL SURVIVE

Each MediaOne region is powered by an Intecom host which allows seamless connections to the smaller call centers through survivable switching units (SSU). If the host fails or if the link between the SSU and the host is broken, remote sites will maintain call-processing capabilities. A single multisite switch gives MediaOne powerful routing, a choice of locations, and the ability to add call-center representatives--as well as providing seamless, integrated data for consolidated reports.

Serving 1.2 million customers in the Northeast, the Chelmsford facility takes calls for all three lines of business "7 x 24"--video, high-speed data, and local telephone service. MediaOne's largest, most technologically advanced call center, Chelmsford, together with sites in Manchester, N.H. and New Bedford, Mass., has 500 representatives handling 20,000 calls daily. The Chelmsford operation also maintains an outbound telesales center with 75 representatives.

"In the Northeast, we are positioned as a model for the rest of the enterprise," says Hackley. "Intecom's CallWise gives us real-time call-center management and reporting capabilities. Calls are routed dynamically to the two other facilities from the main host location as if it were all one site. We are able to see what is also going on in New Bedford and Manchester. Our three- site configuration might be slightly tweaked over time, but the business results have been good and the architecture is ideal."

EXTRA HELP

In addition to Intecom's platform, Brite interactive voice response (IVR), TCS workforce management, and Digital Sound voice mail and predictive dialing also are deployed.

"We do our forecasting from the ground up," says Hackley. "So, for each line of business, we understand the call drivers. We build a forecast for each one. Then we layer it all together for the entire region."

MediaOne chose its call-center technology to meet the competition and to develop more intimate relationships with its customers. By striving to learn as much about the needs and preferences of its customers as possible, MediaOne's Chelmsford location is serving as a vital gateway for customer communication and as a magnet for extracting the information necessary to retain and acquire customers.

IT ALL COMES TOGETHER

Chelmsford agents currently have screen pops that synchronize customers' data with phone calls. By integrating the telephone network capabilities with voice/data switching, the call center can capture information about its customers' purchasing or payment history, data from questionnaires or surveys, and call-transaction histories. This wealth of information is used to determine--automatically--how and where a call is routed, and whether it is routed to the right department, the right level of an automation hierarchy, or a specific agent or group of agents with similar skills.

"The CTI applications allow us to pinpoint high-value customers and provide them with exceptional service and treatment," says Laurie Pellichero, director of call-center technologies for MediaOne's Chelmsford location. "We can use the CTI routing capabilities to notify specific customer segments about outages, marketing promotions, or different services we provide. For example, if we know that they frequently purchase pay-per-view, we can mention to them what the upcoming pay-per-view events are."