Catalog Retailer Harriet Carter Taps Infradapt to Upgrade Its Contact Center and PBX Platforms
52 year old company ships millions of catalogs annually; Replaces Avaya platform with Asterisk and Presence OpenGate, embracing open-source technologies.
PHILADELPHIA, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Infradapt, a leading provider of communications and network infrastructure solutions announces it has been chosen by Harriet Carter Gifts, a Montgomeryville PA based catalog retailer to upgrade its call center and PBX platform.
Harriet Carter, founded in 1958, is a privately-owned retailer of distinctive gifts and specialty brands--including many "as seen on TV" products. Harriet Carter and its sister company Fresh Finds ship catalogs to millions of homes annually. Its headquarters and regional offices receive many thousands of calls each day, including catalog orders, customer service, operations, purchasing, and administration--with some of these departments receiving calls 24/7.
Despite having a relatively modern Avaya Definity PBX platform, Harriet Carter struggled with platform feature limitations and high maintenance costs. With another busy holiday season looming, Harriet Carter approached Infradapt in mid-2009 to discuss options for an infrastructure upgrade. As a Digium Select Partner and experienced implementer of contact center solutions, Infradapt was a natural choice for their project.
Project requirements included:
- Robust contact center solution including analytics, agent monitoring and screen recording, order-entry screen pops, skills-based routing, and other features.
- Platform and vendor capable of dealing with Harriet Carter's large telecommunications infrastructure--three carriers deliver circuits over a DS3 and 12 additional PRIs.
- Capability to upgrade from traditional TDM circuits to SIP trunking using g.729 compression without repurchasing equipment or software.
- Flexibility to change overflow rules to Harriet Carter's third-party outsourced call centers "on the fly".
- Vendor capable of supporting Harriet Carter's complex needs and gracefully transitioning groups from the existing Avaya platform without downtime.
Harriet Carter's large carrier footprint, volumes in peak periods exceeding 15,000 calls per day, a need to integrate several solutions, as well as the requirement that the platform contain no single points of failure, presented a considerable architecture challenge.
Ultimately, a meshed approach based on Asterisk Business Edition was chosen that employed Presence Technology's OpenGate contact center solution. Asterisk servers connect Harriet Carter's network to the PSTN, allowing calls to flow to the internal contact center groups (using Presence OpenGate) or to third-party outsourcers based on call volume and wait times.
The choice to embrace open-source technologies is being made by more organizations every year. Infradapt's Managing Partner Corey McFadden explains, "Digium's Asterisk has achieved a top position in the world PBX market. Enterprise platforms like Presence OpenGate that leverage this innovative flexibility offer a distinct advantage to those customers who deploy them."
Lowell Bergey, Harriet Carter's IT Director explained, "Infradapt was a great choice and helped us integrate the new platform with our systems to allow us to re-route calls to outsourcers from our BlackBerrys based on real-time wait times, as well as change our sales program to accommodate fluctuations in call volume so that we don't lose sales."
By all measures, the project has been a considerable success. Jon Depew, Harriet Carter's Call Center Manager concluded, "I am definitely excited about our transition to Presence and Asterisk. For the first time in my 13 years in this call center I finally feel like my supervisor team and I have the tools we need to ensure that our customers are receiving the high level of service they deserve and that our agents are getting the coaching and positive reinforcement they need."
More details about the project, including a detailed case study can be found on Infradapt's website: http://www.infradapt.com/
About Digum
Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less. Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company's product line includes a wide range of hardware and software to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey VoIP systems or to design their own custom telephony solutions.
About Presence
Presence Technology is a software company specializing in advanced solutions for the Contact Center. Its software solutions optimize resources and increase efficiency of the interactions between companies and their customers. Featuring a highly-qualified professional team along with its network of strategic partners, the company has helped customers worldwide across Europe, South America, South Africa and the USA.
About Infradapt
Infradapt is a leading regional technology solutions firm, providing comprehensive IT consulting and outsourcing. Its customers span many industries from small-to-mid sized businesses to multi-location Fortune-1000 enterprises. Infradapt's solutions range from basic IT services through multi-tier outsourced support and business continuity solutions. Infradapt has a strong IP Telephony (VoIP) service concentration, specializing in designing, integrating, and supporting converged voice networks including multi-site and call center systems. Recognized nationally for service and engineering excellence, Infradapt is the company experts choose.
SOURCE Infradapt
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