Customers Hungry for Holiday Pies Get Prompt Response Thanks to Virtual PBX

VICORP Restaurants Relies on Innovative Call Queuing System To Ensure That Bakers Square and Village Inn Pie Fans Get Their Treats on Time

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtual PBX(R), the inventor and leading supplier of hosted business phone services, and VICORP Restaurants Inc., which operates Village Inn and Bakers Square restaurants, are working together to ensure that orders for award-winning pumpkin, French silk, pecan and apple pies are handled responsively this holiday season.

Village Inn and Bakers Square receive an incredibly high volume of calls to reserve pies during the busiest pie buying season of the year. Virtual PBX's business phone system helps the restaurants provide top-notch customer service since callers won't experience the frustrations of getting a busy signal when trying to reach their favorite pie shop.

In 2006, the restaurant made the decision to move away from an archaic voice messaging system in favor of Virtual PBX to deliver the kind of high-touch customer service it wanted. The company was especially attracted by Virtual PBX's TrueACD(TM) (Automatic Call Distribution) call queuing capability, which it paired with an improved online ordering system. This combination allowed the business to achieve a 10 percent increase in pie sales in the first year.

"We have had as many as 48,000 calls routed by Virtual PBX's call queuing system in a single season," said Jim Ottersberg, IT director of support services, VICORP Restaurants. "Our customers are no longer confronted with a busy signal, and if they cannot get through to a live person immediately, our personalized greeting offers details on other options for placing their pie orders, including our online ordering form. We are now in our third year of using Virtual PBX's TrueACD queuing, and the response from both our customers and restaurant managers has been positive."

VICORP also relies on detailed hourly reports provided by the Virtual PBX system to troubleshoot any issues that impact customer service. This feature gives the company valuable insight as to whether it has a problem within its phone system that needs to be fixed or if it needs to have more staff on hand at high-volume stores.

"VICORP's use of TrueACD queuing is just one of the many unique ways that companies are using our services," said Paul Hammond, CEO of Virtual PBX. "Business leaders such as VICORP recognize the importance of excellence in customer service, and we are proud to partner with them so that thousands of people can enjoy delicious holiday pies from Village Inn or Bakers Square."

Virtual PBX's TrueACD offers the most sophisticated ACD capabilities of any hosted PBX provider. With TrueACD, callers do not need to know the extension of the person they are trying to reach. Businesses can set up skill-based rankings so that the most experienced employees get the most calls, or use load-balancing queues to share the incoming calls evenly across all employees. Managers don't need to spend time entering or changing phone numbers as employee shifts change, since TrueACD queues include presence management and employees log themselves in and out as needed.

TrueACD delivers advanced queue optimization techniques to make sure calls get answered faster, so callers spend less time waiting for someone to become available. If callers go on hold, they can hear holiday music or any other selections from a jukebox with over 120 songs. Clients can also use pre-recorded messages for the queues, and the music or message for each queue can be different. Other advantages of TrueACD queuing include overflow management to bring in more help when the call load gets very heavy, real-time monitoring of caller and agent activity, and queue wait limits to make sure that no one is on hold too long. More information can be found online here.

About Virtual PBX

Virtual PBX believes you never get a second chance to make a good first impression - especially when it comes to serving your customers. Our hosted PBX phone service gives small and growing businesses a professional, fully automated call answering and routing solution that can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Forget the hassles and costs of buying and maintaining your own PBX hardware. With Virtual PBX, your employees, whether in one location or far-flung, can focus on serving your customers while we provide the advanced features and responsiveness that give you a competitive edge. We also offer a backup phone service to ensure your business stays up and running should disaster strike. For more information on how your business can benefit from our innovation and passionate commitment to great customer service, visit us on the Web at www.virtualpbx.com.

Virtual PBX and TrueACD are trademarks of VirtualPBX.com, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

    Media Contacts:

    Kenn Durrence
    The Hoffman Agency
    (408) 975-3097
    virtualpbxpr@hoffman.com

    Greg Brashier
    COO
    VirtualPBX.com, Inc.
    (888) 825-0800, ext. 333
    greg.brashier@virtualpbx.com

SOURCE Virtual PBX