We interviewed Tarn Jones of CHEMTREC before the COVID-19 lockdown to find out how he modernized the organization’s 24/7 contact center.
Tarn Jones, can you give us an overview of CHEMTREC’s contact center objectives?
As our 24-hour call center expanded beyond emergency response, we needed to integrate more with our other systems, such as our mass email notification system. The functionality of the system we had was pretty much “receive a call” and “record a call.” And then we outgrew those needs.
The flexibility and self-management elements of the Interactive Intelligence platform was what drove us down that path, as well as compatibility with the Microsoft suite of products. The way call center or telecom needs has evolved is in adding more channels of communication. So instead of just receiving a phone call, now we need chat and email interactions that get routed through automatic call distributing queuing (ACDQ). We needed to provide different ways for people to communicate with our call center.
Can you give a specific example of why this integration is so critical for CHEMTREC?
Sure. For us, if we have to evacuate the building, it’s very important to keep our systems live and running and then auto-fail over to a backup or tertiary system automatically without having to flip a switch. That makes it so much easier from an IT perspective, or from a management perspective, not to have to worry about manually engaging these elements. The redundancy elements are built into the platform and are really helpful for us.
You’ve had the system in place for a while now. Give us an update.
Over the last year or so, we have implemented the web accessibility of the platform which allows us to access systems on the go with a web connection. In the past we had to have a complicated VPN connection with other servers and other technology and all that’s involved. Now we have to ability to translate audio over the web, and that has made our DR mechanisms on the primary system, the Interactive Intelligence system, invaluable to our ability to be redundant.
What is your philosophy about working with IT partners?
It’s very important for us to treat vendors not as vendors but as partners. Francois and his team’s ability to support us 24/7 with our call center needs has been fantastic. I feel like I can call–I have called–at all hours of the day, and they’ve been right there, dropping everything to be a partner of ours. They work with our network engineers to troubleshoot problems and make sure there’s a timely resolution to any issues. It’s been fantastic.
That’s one thing we pride ourselves on: The fact that they are partners of ours. It’s not just, “Hey, I’m paying you to do this kind of thing.” It’s a genuine partnership to make sure both our organizations continue to be successful.
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