Cisco Gold Partner CTI Deploys Call-Center Solution for Florida Credit Union

July 26, 2005

By Cindy McDowell, News@Cisco

Publix Employees Federal Credit Union (PEFCU) serves the financial needs of the 12,000-plus associates of Publix Super Markets, Inc. and their family members. PEFCU's main office is located in Lakeland, Florida, and there are four full-service branch offices located in Florida and one in Georgia.

The credit union looked to Cisco® partner Coleman Technologies, Inc. (CTI) to overhaul its communications systems, including the phones on employees' desks, its call center infrastructure, and its credit card-approval system, while ensuring the tight network security that financial institutions require.

CTI, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner with specializations in IP telephony, security, IP Communications, and wireless technology, is among the top Cisco partners in sales for the southeast region, and has offices in Florida and Tennessee. The company has a perpetual services engagement with Publix Supermarkets and heard about the credit union's interest in IP Communications. Karen Sullivan, director of IT at PEFCU, asked CTI and several other firms to submit quotes for the project.

"CTI had the best proposal, the best price, and an engineering team that I knew could get the job done," says Sullivan. "Publix Supermarkets gave them a good recommendation, and I also liked that they were a local company."

"We had solutions from other vendors in place and we had an interactive voice response (IVR) system that's critical in approving customer-written checks for various vendors," she says. "When I showed our executive staff how an IP solution could grow with the call center and eventually replace our PBX phone solution, they were really sold on it. And when CTI showed they could write an interface that would integrate the new call-center solution with our core banking software such as IVR-management was extremely pleased."

PEFCU had struggled with a public branch exchange (PBX) phone system with all-too-familiar problems: the vendor was no longer providing a high level of support, and the maintenance costs grew higher every year. Sullivan and her team knew they wanted to move away from PBX because of its proprietary nature and lack of features compared to Cisco CallManager and IP Communications solutions.

"The escalating costs of maintenance and overall management of our phone and call-center systems was dragging our department down," says Sullivan. "We needed a voice communication solution that included support of our IVR system which receives 400,000 calls a month. We needed a solid solution with good support, something our staff could easily learn, and that would save money on our moves, adds, and changes." PEFCU had already invested heavily in Cisco equipment and CTI invested the time to learn in-depth about the credit union's business and goals, so CTI understood clearly the direction PEFCU was heading and what it was trying to accomplish.

CTI designed a solution that included implementing Cisco equipment to replace hardware from other vendors, and helping ensure PEFCU could have IP Communications throughout its offices within two years. Part of that solution included installing Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) Express to provide call-center management for the credit union's 12 call-center employees, with the potential for expansion for more employees at different locations.

"We have mastered the art of working and implementing Cisco IPCC Express," says Garry Reid, account manager at CTI. "We have created a solid group of people who understand the capabilities and provide the glue to interface with other systems and provide Web interfaces for future applications." For instance PEFCU required a strong integration with its current banking application that provides merchant verification of checks written by credit union members. CTI wrote an XML integrated application in one week and Karen reports that the interface works flawlessly.

In fact the entire CTI and Cisco solution deployed easily and Sullivan reports that it meets every requirement on her "need" list. One of the greatest benefits of the new system is that the call center is dropping fewer calls and has reduced its time for each customer-support call by more than half. And thanks to the effective training conducted by CTI, the call center was fully operational in less than a day.

"Before, when a call came into the call center, that person had a good chance of being transferred around until the right person was found to handle the question," says Sullivan. "With Cisco IPCC Express, we have a knowledge base that can help with nearly every question and transaction. We're handling more calls more efficiently." Karen and her staff have a few ideas in mind about next steps for taking advantage of their new IP Communications solution. They would like to get the Cisco MeetingPlace® conferencing solution up and running to replace the Web-based meeting vendor they currently use, and she would love to see a Web-based contact center and maybe instant messaging.

According to Reid, CTI's successes are tied directly to its engineering talent.

"We have moved from being a hardware and equipment reseller to a service-based organization," he says. "Everyone has their own opinion about what they think is important to the customers out there. We have created a cadre of engineering talent that is very solid and leaves a good mark out there and we've become a go-to partner for Cisco in Florida, and we're number four in the southeast. We've created a skill set and expertise that Cisco values: we build solutions based on business needs and deliver them on time and on budget."

Cindy McDowell is a freelance journalist located in Santa Cruz, CA.