ACD system just the ticket for travel agency - Carlson Wagonlit Travel

Communications News, Feb, 1995

Barely 20 years ago, the travel industry was comprised of handwritten tickets and two airline fares: coach or first-class. Today's competitive travel agency grapples with worldwide air and ground reservations, client preference files and corporate cost management reports.

Amid the evolution of the industry, one component has never gone out of style: the customer's expectation of top service for each dollar spent. Minneapolis-based Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) never forgets this and is known for its "bend over backwards" attitude to serve its travelers.

CWT's solid reputation helped it become one of the largest business-oriented travel agencies in the world, backed by a $10.8 billion network with more than 4,000 locations in 125 countries.

While CWT offers traditional agency functions (reservations and seat assignments, boarding passes, ticket deliveries, and ground and hotel needs), it specializes in customized travel management services. Drawing on their technical and industry expertise, CWT employees enable clients to design and adhere to cost-effective travel policies that include lowest applicable fares, detailed expense reports and streamlined operations.

The result is a combination of less paperwork, lower travel costs and timely expense verification and reconciliation.

When CWT was awarded the corporate travel account of a Fortune 500 electronics/defense conglomerate in 1992, the travel firm realized it needed a fast, efficient ACD system that would service the new client's thousands of travelers.

CWT chose the Spectrum system from Rockwell International's Switching Systems Division.

Spectrum initially supported 60 agents on six T1 lines for WATS traffic (inbound to handle client employee calls and outbound to connect CWT to the company's private tandem network) and two other T1 lines for a voice response unit interface. It is set up with 40 application groups to facilitate the client's business components.

CWT and Rockwell worked together to design a token ring local area network (LAN) with a 486-based PC and Spectrum's Transaction Link X.25 voice/ data interface.

When an employee of the electronics firm contacts CWT, the VRU solicits the customer's identification number and pulls up the caller's travel profile. The host database on the LAN determines the appropriate application group and instructs the VRU where to send the call and the information.

"One of the reasons we chose the system was the reputation for systems integration and support," says Dave Slattery, operations leader for the CWT office processing the client's reservations.

"Currently, we have the latest in ACD technology working harmoniously with a large LAN system and a VRU network. That's a total call processing solution."

Slattery says the system's flexibility and dependability are almost unparalleled. In the months since the installation, the number of agents has qualed to 250, the calls per have jumped to 30,000, and it has easily accommodated this rapid growth.

CWT also has a Spectrum system in its Minneapolis headquarters. This second ACD is a testbed for the company's internally developed software that runs on the LAN-spectrum interface. CWT engineers can now design new applications and test their proprietary software in real-time scenarios without any danger of affecting calls on the system.

The InfoView Control System gives real-time color displays of system-wide activities, including historical and up-to-the-moment performance analyses. In addition, it makes graphical and tabular long-term reports available on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.