The Perrier Group is the leading provider of bottled water products in North America. Its brand names, which include Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Calistoga, Zephyrhills, Deer Park, Great Bear, Ice Mountain and Ozarka account for 65 percent of the market share for bottled water, a product whose popularity threatens to overtake that of many leading soft drink brands in the not-so-distant future. As more and more people make bottled water the beverage of choice, customer service and workforce efficiency at Perrier's three call centers are more critical than ever. With its contact centers already fielding more than 6 million calls a year, the call center team was tasked with readying for future growth using existing resources.
For answers, Perrier turned to IEX Corporation, a company known for award-winning call routing and workforce scheduling technologies that deliver immediate results. Implementing the company's TotalView Workforce Management and TotalNet Call Routing products allowed Perrier to manage operations at its Massachusetts, Texas and California contact centers as if the facilities were a single, large site. This synergistic approach produced immediate results.
- Cost Savings - The implementation of TotalNet Call Routing helped Perrier avoid about $15,000 per month in T-1 charges. Before deploying IEX technology, Perrier used MCI special features to help route calls. That cost the company an average of .02 cents per transaction (estimated reoccurring annual savings: .02x6Mil=$120,000). Beyond those savings, the company avoided an estimated $400,000 in capitol expense for networking its PBX's across the country in the conventional manner. Since establishing a virtual call center environment with the TotalNet solution the Perrier Group saw and acted on the opportunity to consolidate from three call centers to two. Perrier’s estimated cost savings from consolidating its centers is estimated at around $3 million per year.
- Network Insurance - When Perrier experienced network problems that were delaying call delivery, minor programming of the TotalNet system allowed the company to reroute all its calls in less than 15 minutes. The TotalNet system's fast-acting capabilities allowed the company to avoid an entire day off-line.
- Service Level Improvements - The company realized similar positive benefits from its use of TotalView Workforce Management. The system's scheduling, reporting and real-time features allowed Perrier to achieve its goal of having customer service representatives on the phone for 7.5 hours of an eight-hour shift. The TotalView system identified the multiple tasks that the agents were handling between phone calls. This information allowed Perrier to evaluate how agents' time is actually spent so that the appropriate steps could be taken to boost workload efficiency. Perrier’s customer service representatives also benefited as a result of their implementation of the IEX TotalNet system for virtual call routing. By having the ability to route inbound calls to the most available center at the network level Perrier can maintain a balanced workload for their representatives in both centers.
- Disaster Management - Perrier also gained a disaster management benefit through its implementation of IEX technology. In the past, if a natural disaster forced Perrier to close one of its contact centers, callers would have either received no answer or a busy signal. Today, those calls would be easily re-routed to other centers. Perrier’s disaster management capability was put to the test this last winter when an ice storm forced the closing of their call center in Massachusetts. Threats of rolling power outages in the Southern California area also has Perrier concerned but they are ready to deal with the situation if and when it does occur.
For more information about Perrier Group, please visit their website .
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