Televergence's Customer Service as a Competitive Advantage Improves 500+ Seat Call Center's Profitability 

Background

As this large call center customer’s profit and call ratios continued to decline, they addressed the difficult to diagnose issues they were experiencing with their 4 other carriers, which included two Tier 1 and two other Tier 2 carriers. Only Televergence was able to resolve the issue.

The 500+ seat call center customer specialized in debt collection, medical notification and political polling and had two Tier 1 and three Tier 2 carriers in routing. Approximately 90% is predictive dialing using a combination of Dialogic TDM and next generation VoIP systems. Expansion included a multi-year lease, a floor plan with desks and computers, phone deployment and a new 300 megabit fiber optic using a local cable company. Initial turn up went well, however, issues began being reported as capacity was activated: deteriorating call quality, failing calls to certain regions, poor drop ratios and sales-to-call ratios, and one-way audio.

Challenges

Both Tier 1 carriers assumed the customer-facing performance issues were on the customer’s end, provided little technical support, and dismissed the issue as a nuisance customer with poor technical understanding within a week. The Tier 2 carriers included:

A regional CLEC whose experience was limited to TDM and whose switch vendor focused on theoretical issues such as calls per second and the customer’s VoIP hardware; they even suggested the customer install multiple DS3 loops to carry traffic into a platform in which they had more experience;

An exclusively VoIP carrier with a “no skin in the game” infrastructure and a “best attempt” call completion philosophy which negatively impacted the customer’s low sales-to-call ratio and operator wait times; and

Solutions

Because Televergence maintains a redundant fiber connectivity, a Cisco based network, a Lucent TDM/SONET network, colocation space and a Dell blade server infrastructure, their technical team was able to identify and resolve the issue of one-way and poor quality audio on a majority of peak time calls. Voice-related issues are tracked at a signaling and packet media transport level. A single control-of-infrastructure enabled ownership of identifying and resolving the issues.

To avoid the bandwidth costs of handling full call audio, most carriers only touch the signaling and allow audio to directly connect between the customer and the upstream endpoint. In contrast, Televergence proxies all VoIP media, which allows an inspection of audio and the identification of issues not often “seen”.

Simulated calls revealed that packets were being throttled from the customer’s connection at only 10 megabits per second between the carrier and upstream IP connections, even though their enterprise grade fiber connection should have guaranteed priority network placement. They also were not aware that traffic shaping and throttling may apply to their connection and traffic.

The solution included Televergence’s utilization of it’s BGP relationship with upstream carriers, which forced the customer’s ISP to seek alternative routes that were not throttle enabled. Next, the technical team reviewed how throttling was being achieved. While their predictive system did not have access to g729 or g723 codec licenses, TSI maintains transcoding hardware and public domain codecs, which were applied to every call, regardless of final destination networks. 

Today, their existing connection completes calls without hitting their ISP’s traffic shaping limits and they are investigating a new fiber provider.

About Televergence

Televergence provides long distance and toll-free service, managing 3+ million toll free numbers for 30+ years under consistent management as a privately held, debt-free enterprise. The company is a WBENC (Women’s Business Enterprise National Council) certified WBE (Women’s Business Enterprise) for supplier diversification programs. Founded and managed by the CEO, Deb Ward is the first and current Chairwoman of INCOMPAS, the industry’s leading trade organization. 

A reputation for transparency and integrity is reflected by an average length of customer of 15+ years. The U.S.-based technical team possess an average of 20+ years of industry experience and are familiar with most legacy and next-gen platforms.  A TDM to VoIP conversion and no risk, complimentary test of the services is offered.

Membership, advisory, and board roles are maintained with the Alliance of Channel Women, American Marketing Association, Better Business Bureau, Federal Internet Service Providers Association, INCOMPAS, Insights Association, Nashville Chamber of Commerce, Nashville Technology Council, National Association of Women Business Owners, Professional Association for Customer Engagement, Receivables Management Association, Telecom Associates, Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and Women In Technology of Tennessee.