Case Study: TORO Uses NEC to Give Customers Quality Call Center Care

A company’s contact center is often its primary — if not only — source of human interaction with customers, particularly after a purchase. The quality of service contact center employees provide can have great influence on customers’ decisions to make repeat purchases or refer others. By implementing the right technology, enterprises can equip contact center employees with the tools they need to improve productivity, enhance service quality and make a positive impact on the company’s bottom line.

Client:

The TORO Company is a leading, global provider of turf-maintenance products, services and equipment. The company has catered to both residential and commercial customers since 1914. The TORO National Support Network (NSN) provides technical support and troubleshooting to large turf customers who use TORO-brand computerized irrigation systems. The TORO NSN, with the help of NEC-authorized dealer Batts Communications, implemented a UNIVERGE 360 solution that simplified management within its contact center and improved communications across the support organization.

Problem:

The TORO Company offers a number of innovative, computerized, irrigation-control systems that provide effective, yet cost-efficient, environmentally friendly turf maintenance. TORO NSN provides dedicated technical support and troubleshooting to its large turf, irrigation-control customers such as golf courses, municipal parks, sports complexes and large corporate facilities. Located in Abilene, Texas, the contact center handles an average of 300 calls per day during peak season.

TORO NSN used a legacy NEC communications solution and contact center application for nearly a decade. Because the solution was being discontinued, the aging equipment posed a number of productivity challenges in the contact center.

“Anytime the contact center needed changes or adjustments, we had to track down someone in the IT department, who would have to shut down the queue,” said Dave Smith, customer service manager, TORO NSN. “This not only reduced productivity within the contact center, it also pulled the IT staff off their current duties.”

The aging equipment also had the IT department anticipating problems. “I would set aside two hours to reboot the call center application,” said Marcus Carroll, systems analyst supervisor, TORO NSN. “This wasn’t because of the quality of the product, but simply because of its age.”

The legacy system also hindered the contact center’s goal to continually provide improved service quality to their customers.

“The system was limited in what it could do,” said Carroll. “We were pushing past the envelope of what it was designed to do.”

TORO NSN needed a cost-effective solution that would improve its contact center operations now, as well as provide the ease and flexibility for future growth.

Solution:

TORO NSN evaluated four of the larger solution providers for its new system.

“We worked with Batts Communications on our legacy installation,” said Carroll. “While we were happy with our partnership with them all these years, we had to do our due diligence to be sure we were getting the most value for our investment.”

The company eventually decided to continue working with Batts Communication, and then decided on NEC’s UNIVERGE solutions, an IP communications server and UC application capable of unifying all facets of business communications.

“The UC for Business (UCB) contact center solution was the driving force behind our decision because it is highly flexible and provides better reporting, which gives us complete visibility and total control of the contact center operations,” said Carroll. “The UNIVERGE SV8300 communications server also IP-enables our operation and gives us the flexibility to provide state-of-the-art service to our customers.”

The UCB contact center solution allows employees to respond to operational demands in real time. Agents use a single, easy-to-use desktop interface to manage multimedia contacts including phone, e-mail and chat sessions. The agent desktop also provides a complete picture of current contact center activity, including queue status, agents’ call statistics and calls waiting, which allows them to proactively respond to situations that could impact service levels.

UCB’s management console also allows contact center managers to view the current status of individuals and groups of agents to quickly identify and resolve issues that impact service level. What’s more, managers can easily make call-routing changes without the help of the IT department.

“UCB empowers the contact center staff to manage their piece of the application on their own,” said Carroll. “Because they are more acquainted with the business, they can make better decisions about changes and adjustments they need.”

TORO NSN also uses UCB outside the contact center.

“We’ve now set up an auto attendant for our sales, training and accounting departments, which was very difficult to set up and manage with our old system,” said Carroll. “The UCB interface is easy to set up and allows us to make changes much more efficiently.”

UCB provides the company access to more than 150 in-depth reports that provide visibility into every incoming call.

“UCB provides us cradle-to-grave reporting on every call coming into our business,” said Carroll. “Whether it’s calls into the contact center or to our various business departments, we know where it comes from, where it goes and where it ultimately ends up.”

TORO NSN plans to implement UCB’s SQL-integration module in the future and will use the reports’ real-time and historical data to provide a more personalized, contact center experience for its customers and further enhance service quality.

Results:

TORO NSN saw a significant increase in service quality within its contact center shortly after implementing its UNIVERGE360 solution. The solution also has improved productivity both inside and outside of the contact center.

“We no longer have to wait on IT to make changes for us, which makes us a lot more responsive to our customers,” said Smith. “What’s more, since we require much less intervention from the IT group, the IT department can focus on other projects.”

TORO NSN is confident that the UNIVERGE solution provides the technology that will help its contact center operations provide world-class customer satisfaction.

“There are things the old system simply was unable to do, even on its best day,” said Smith. “With this new system, we haven’t even touched everything we want to do. But when we do, we feel it’s going to continue to improve customer service tremendously.”