Intelligent Systems Report € December € 1996 € Volume 13 € No. 12

US West deploys smart call handling system

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US West Communications Group (Denver, Colo.; www.uswest.com), a provider of telecommunications services to 25 million customers throughout the West and Midwest, and Carnegie Group Inc. (Pittsburgh, Pa.; www.cgi.com), an intelligent systems developer, have deployed a Front End Screen & Route (FES&R) system in the US West Mass Market (residential and small business) environment. The FES&R system, the central component of US West's Call Handling program, makes it easier for customers to access Mass Market customer service representatives by shortening call routing time and ensuring that each call gets to the service rep best equipped to assist the customer.

The FES&R system is intended to facilitate any call, any time, anywhere, whether for sales, support or collections. It supports a seven day/24 hour call center operation covering multiple voice response units (VRUs) and automatic call distributors in the US West territory.

The system provides a front end for the VRUs to enable customer self-help. In addition, flexible business rules combined with customer, network and market intelligence information are used to provide advanced call control capabilities and load balancing for intelligent call routing and screening. As a result, the FES&R system improves the match between the caller (customer) and the call handler (customer service/collection teams).

"The FES&R system is already handling over 200,000 calls a day, covering the entire 14 state territory for US West Mass Market callers," said Barbara Irwin, US West's senior director for customer care systems. "This area includes over 5,000 customer contact employees and 41 VRUs, routing calls to central office ACDs. The project is meeting its business goals of increased customer satisfaction, increased customer responsiveness, and increased revenue."

FES&R uses a flexible rule base which can easily be changed in response to competition by using a Netscape-based intranet application for rule administration." The first pilot system was developed in six months by Carnegie Group, using C++ and Netscape. The FES&R system runs on a configuration of Sequent and HP hardware platforms.