Case Studies
Customer Stories
When Drive Medical Design & Manufacturing — one of the fastest growing durable medical equipment companies in the world — needed a sophisticated feature set to serve its customers, they chose NacTel to install and integrate the ShoreTel UC system, a brilliantly simple unified communication (UC) solution based on its award-winning IP business phone system.
ShoreTel’s unique distributed architecture offered an appliance-based network with built in N+1 redundancy, rather than a more complex server-based network. In a typical Nx2 or 2N network, equipment is typically doubled, which is expensive and highly inefficient. ShoreTel’s easy-to-use management interface offered a single image across all appliances with distributed processing, so there was no single point of failure. By adding just one additional appliance — the “1” of the N+1 technology — any failure was handled, creating redundancy throughout the entire system.
As part of its all-in-one solution, Drive Medical chose the ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center to link its corporate office in Port Washington, NY with four discrete locations in Hauppauge, NY; Pico Rivera, CA; Toronto, CANADA and Atlanta, GA— all with more than 200 users. The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center offered many features critical to boosting Drive Medical’s sales, marketing and support effort including:
Seamless movement across all locations so that when New York closes at 5 EST, calls would be rerouted to California for the next three hours.
Routing to telecommuter agents across the US and United Kingdom.
Dynamic Priority Routing that includes all rule-based routing, but with additional highly flexible routing features, including the ability to send customers to the front of the queue if they need to move to another department, priority routing based on the skill sets of agents on hand, and electronic routing slips that provide notes associated with the customer.
Intelligent Call Routing that assigns a specialist based on the criteria of the customer. For example, if the call comes from a major distributor or a priority business partner it will be routed to an agent handling that account or that level of customer automatically.
Drive Medical Chief Technology Officer Charles P. Chiodo explained what made the project successful. “The term partnership is so overused that I feel a little self conscious about using it but with NacTel, that’s exactly what it was. NacTel became part of our team in every way. They introduced us to technology that we didn’t know existed, dramatically impacting the output of our very busy call center with 15,000 calls per month… improving the overall customer experience. And when our existing systems caused the inevitable glitch before we went live, NacTel was right there to help. Never did I feel that they were a vendor—they were always part of the team.”
NacTel President Jamie Buswell commented, “We could see from the beginning that Drive Medical’s business model demanded a more intelligent call center management system. As soon as we began outlining the capabilities of the ShoreTel Contact Center to the Drive Medical team, their eyes lit up even more than when we explained how the appliance-based communications platform worked. It was extremely gratifying to see how we could impact a company’s marketing effort that much.”
About Drive Medical Design & Manufacturing: Drive Medical is one of the fastest growing major manufacturers and distributors of durable medical equipment in the home healthcare, medical/surgical and rehabilitation markets in the United States. Drive Medical markets over 2,500 products throughout the world and has manufacturing and distribution facilities located throughout the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Taiwan, Romania and Canada. The company’s mission is to manufacture and market world class products which focus on innovation, functionality and value to improve the quality of life and to promote independence for the individuals that use Drive Medical products.
Organ donation is part of a system in which failsafe communications can be literally a critical element in a life or death situation. That’s why when it came to the choice of who would install and integrate a new critical communications system for the New York Organ Donor Network, they looked no further than NacTel. NYOD is the nation’s second largest nonprofit, federally designated organ procurement organization. The system they installed is ShoreTel, the provider of a simple Unified Communication (UC) solutions based on its award-winning IP business phone system.
“ShoreTel provided exactly what we were looking for, a communications system that offers complete availability and reliability,” said Jim Aranda, the Donor Network’s vice president of administration and CFO. “Our mission is to save lives through organ and tissue donation. ShoreTel’s resiliency is especially important because the events that might compromise typical phone and data systems are exactly the circumstances in which our organization might be most needed.”
NacTel’s president, Jamie Buswell, explained that ShoreTel’s system limits the type of exposure Mr. Aranda was referring to by providing the ultimate in redundancy, route diversity and mobility, the three keys to business continuity.
“The reason we are so high on ShoreTel is that they employ a unique N+1 Technology — it’s a network that is not server-based, but appliance-based,” Mr. Buswell said. “In a typical Nx2 or 2N network, everything is doubled — very expensive and highly inefficient. With N+1 there is a single image across all appliances with distributed processing, so there is no single point of failure. By adding just one additional appliance — the “1” of the N+1 technology — any failure is handled, so essentially we are creating redundancy throughout the entire system.” Mr. Buswell added that there is no lack of fidelity, and because of the peer-to-peer connectivity in lieu of client-controlled connectivity, speed may actually increase.
Elaborating on how NacTel went about the business of listing and understanding every contingency for the New York Organ Donor Network, Mr. Buswell said that NacTel worked diligently as a team. “The process for the Donor Network entailed an analysis of every possible failure: from carrier to LAN to system to business continuity issues and more,” he said. “From that data set, NacTel developed primary and secondary solutions, all backed up and tested for compliance.”
According to Jim Valdez, the Donor Network’s IT manager, what was compelling about working with NacTel was the consultative nature of the relationship, the installation and the ongoing support.
“NacTel had the wherewithal to do a demo at our location, which showed their expertise as well as the ease of the ShoreTel system,” Mr. Valdez said. “Also, as a nonprofit, we expected our vendor to work with us on price, but what we did not expect was that the best technology would come in at the lowest cost. Jamie and his team are patient and courteous to a fault, even now during full-on operation and just not during the installation.”
About New York Organ Donor Network: Founded in 1978, the New York Organ Donor Network is the second largest of the nation’s 58 nonprofit, federally designated organ procurement organizations. The Donor Network is responsible for the recovery of organs, eyes and tissues for transplantation, and public and professional education efforts in the greater New York metropolitan area. It serves a highly diverse population of 13 million in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Westchester and Pike County, PA. The organization partners with 10 transplant centers, more than 100 hospitals, as well as several eye and tissue banks. The New York Organ Donor Network is fully accredited by the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO). It is a member of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS). For more information about the Donor Network, and to enroll as an organ donor in the New York State Donate Life Registry, visit www.donatelifeny.org.
After an extensive search, National Distribution Alliance, the largest independently owned and operated newspaper wholesaler in the country chose ShoreTel’s simple Unified Communication (UC) solution based on its award-winning IP business phone system, provided by NacTel, the award-winning communications sales and service organization, headquartered in Plainview and Hauppauge, NY.
Why NacTel and ShoreTel? The answer was as simple as ShoreTel’s “brilliantly simple” solutions set. NDA’s core business—distributing hundreds of periodicals to more than 10,000 merchants—is a 24/7, 365-day per year operation. NDA provides time-critical service to publishers and merchants across the metropolitan area. To this end, NDA’s choice of a communications solution was based on these key objectives:
Achieve operating efficiencies and provide best-in-class service to merchants, publishers and field personnel
Unify operational communications across five regional distribution centers
Provide redundancy, route diversity and survivability for each of the company’s distribution centers
Control the system via an accessible, single-source web application, even on a remote basis
Manage scalable growth
Deliver intuitive and easy-to-use call center administration and supervision
Provide merchants access to daily delivery status and account information via Interactive Voice Response and make CSR intervention optional
Eliminate wait times and abandons when contacting CSRs and the ability to request a callback rather than to hold in a queue
NDA operates more than 150 dedicated routes daily. In this scenario, anything that affects delivery – inclement weather, a publisher’s late close or a truck breakdown – needs to be managed and communicated to the field immediately. Proactive communications protect sales, manage merchant expectations and mitigate complaints. NDA’s new system enables custom messages and immediate deployment. If a delivery exception occurs, NDA is able to post messages for merchants calling to learn if their outlet is affected and if to expect an on-time, late or recovered delivery. NacTel’s strategic initiatives, using the ShoreTel system, give NDA this ability.
Commenting on the relationship, NDA President & COO Mike Pouchie shared what led the company to choose NacTel: “This was an important project for us; we had to get it right. We’re a 365-day operation so we had to transition during our production cycle. That made our choice of NacTel as a partner even more important. NacTel did a great job for us and we’re providing better service to our publishers and merchants as a result“
Sally SooHoo, one of NDA’s Customer Care experts, added, “NacTel's presentation was informative and provided specifics that related to the applications we were looking to implement. The account rep was knowledgeable about call center applications; he shared examples of how other clients used the proposed system. Another major factor was in-house training; NacTel provided it while other vendors proposed using a “training service”. NacTel's proposed configuration was more comprehensive in addressing our operational needs, both short and long-term and implementation went smoothly. We didn’t have any down time.”
Regarding early results, Mike remarked, “Now that the product is installed and we have several months of use under our belts, we’ve improved our call handling and operational efficiencies. We’re able to provide dedicated service to diverse groups of callers, including our merchants, publishers and even our field/delivery personnel. This allows us to handle calls quickly, to reduce or eliminate wait times and to improve efficiency.”
NacTel President Jamie Buswell commented, “We understood from the get-go that the value that NDA was offering its stakeholders was the instantaneous communications and infrastructure that makes NDA almost indispensable to these publishers and merchants. There was no doubt that ShoreTel’s system capabilities was perfect for NDA today, and its rich feature set paves the way for future enhancements to the way it manages and relates to its customer base. In fact, we are talking about future initiatives such as expanding IVR and call center applications as well as automating processes and integration of the phone and CIS systems, all possible within the ShoreTel environment and all geared to give merchants even more opportunity to query the system and manage their own accounts.”
About National Distribution Alliance: NDA is the largest independently owned and operated newspaper wholesaler in the country, representing over 200 newspapers including the New York Times, USA Today, the New York Daily News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Diario de Mexico, Sing Tao, the Irish Echo and more than 250 magazines, including People, Time, Vanity Fair, Star, Maxim, Cosmopolitan, National Enquirer, People en Espanol, Vanidades and O Magazine. NDA services more than 10,000 merchants in the New York Metro area daily, helping publishers reach more outlets, and to do so more cost-effectively than they can do through their own direct delivery.
Goodwill Industries of New York and New Jersey, one of the oldest Goodwill affiliates in the US, was in need to streamline incoming calls from 46 stores to a single location, and utilize assistive software technologies for its customer service representatives who are blind or visually impaired. Goodwill NY and NJ in partnership with its vocational rehabilitation program developed the ‘Call Forward’ project, specially designed to create a customer service and support call center for the retail division. Needing to expand their current capabilities, Goodwill Industries turned to North Shore Telecommunications, authorized Samsung dealer, to upgrade the organization’s current phone system throughout its entire network. Their most immediate needs included the following:
Build a solid foundation for a Call/Contact center
Improve stores’ customer experience and satisfaction
Create more job opportunities for the disabled
The project required a thoughtful approach to accessible computer, phones, equipment, database and software. North Shore Telecommunications was truly committed to go above and beyond in helping Goodwill work through a long and arduous process to create a social enterprise that would benefit people with legal blindness.
A Samsung OfficeServ 7400 system was deployed with 3 Dual PRI cards, 48 digital station ports and 64 VoIP channels Via 2, and OAS cards for 64 channels of remote connections at the main administration and call center location. Additionally, 46 store locations were equipped with OfficeServ 7030 systems with SPNet to the main location with three DS 5014D stations at each store.
All store calls are answered in the Call Center through a Samsung OfficeServ 7400 with Softphones installed behind a server with Offi ceServ Call, which offers PC-based contact tracking and scheduling on-screen dialing from Microsoft outlook contacts and digital telephone programming. Also, Offi ceServ Link, and Offi ceServ DataView software along with ancillary programs for the visually impaired representatives are used in conjunction to provide a screen pop with the store that is being called via caller ID information, for easy identification, prioritization and proper routing of calls, as well as its related store information such as hours of operation, special sales, directions, etc.
Results
The largest benefit for this customer was the ability to use the softphone program along with two ancillary programs with macros to assist the blind or visually impaired staff. The results totally transformed Goodwill’s operations and have provided the following benefits:
Increased call volume processing
Improved customer satisfaction
Improved and consistent customer service
Better support to stores that are often understaffed
Less interruptions, allowing store personnel focus on their jobs
While a constant increasing volume of calls is being reported, staffing patterns at the stores remain the same; the staff has the opportunity for additional training, and there has been less staff turnover during the nine months since the program started. Sales and projections for the year are up, allowing the retail division to open more stores throughout their territory.
About Goodwill Industries of New York, New Jersey
Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey, Inc. is a non-sectarian, nonprofit organization serving people with disabilities, including developmental, intellectual, physical and psychiatric, blindness, the unemployed, new immigrants, ex-offenders, mature workers and underserved youth. Good-will’s diverse programs span New York City, Northern New Jersey, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. Goodwill serves more than 136,000 people annually. Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey is one of the oldest Goodwill affiliates in the United States, and one of more than 200 Goodwill Industries International affiliates worldwide. The organization has served the NYC area for almost a century. See www.goodwillny.org.