Unified Communications Improves Service to Voters, Saves Vital Taxpayer Dollars SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 30
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ShoreTel(R)
(http://www.shoretel.com/) (Nasdaq: SHOR), a leading provider of Pure IP
Unified Communications (UC) solutions, today announced that Hillsborough
County (http://www.votehillsborough.org/) in Florida, working with ShoreTel's
Tampa, Florida-based partner DataComm Networks Incorporated, has deployed a
ShoreTel UC system at the office of the Supervisor of Elections. The new
system, which delivers daily cost and operational benefits, saves the
organization significant additional time and money on election days, when call
volumes soar by more than 400 percent. With ShoreTel, the Supervisor of
Elections has unified the county's communications across multiple sites,
improved service to the citizens of Hillsborough County, and saved vital
taxpayer dollars.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081030/AQTH020-a)
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081030/AQTH020-b)
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081030/AQTH020-c)
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
-- Old, inflexible PBXs: With three aging PBX systems in its two offices,
the organization had high monthly recurring charges for moves, adds
and changes, and the separate phone systems had no integration for
interoffice communications.
-- Election-Day Surges: The office typically maintains 30 phones to
handle incoming calls throughout the year. On election day, however,
the increased volume of calls requires as many as 140 phones to handle
call volume. This forced the Supervisor of Elections office to endure
the extraordinary cost and time of ordering, installing, testing, and
then uninstalling an average of 60 Centrex analog lines at least one-
and-a-half months in advance of each election. Despite the time and
cost, the new lines often failed to work properly, and during a
previous election, overflow calls rolled over into a voicemail box
that had not been ordered. This resulted in unanswered calls that
frustrated voters.
-- ShoreTel as the Solution: The organization selected ShoreTel for its
phone system based on features, price and the ability to easily handle
the occasional high call volumes. Key features and benefits include:
-- A distributed architecture that unifies communications across the
organization's multiple locations.
-- Built-in workgroup functionality that makes it easy to route calls
on a typical day and set up an election-day call center -
including a special call group for Spanish speakers.
-- Workgroup agent call routing capabilities that let receptionists
and operators be located anywhere in either office, which helps
ensure incoming calls are answered by a real person.
-- Advanced reporting features that let administrators analyze how
individual operators handle their calls, allowing the organization
to assign the right people to the right tasks.
-- Simple system administration that allows moves, adds and changes
to be easily handled internally, without requiring the services of
an expensive contractor.
The Supervisor of Elections office purchased 130 ShoreTel handsets,
which are preconfigured for the ShoreTel UC system, ensuring quick and
easy installation.
-- Lower Costs: The ShoreTel UC system enabled the organization to cut
its $4,000 monthly charge for 30 phones to $1300 per month for up to
120 simultaneous calls. With additional SIP trunks always available,
the organization needs only a 24-hour window to ready the phones for
an election, and they automatically work seamlessly with the ShoreTel
UC system.
-- Election-tested: The county's ShoreTel UC system was put to the test
for the first time during an election in August 2008. Agents processed
1,200 phone calls. The system worked flawlessly, with calls properly
routed even during the periods of highest volume. System efficiency
made it possible to keep the average wait time to talk around eight
seconds. The longest wait time during peak volume was under three
minutes.
-- Emergency-tested: A recent hurricane caused a sudden spike in calls
from voters wanting to know if an election would take place as
scheduled. When chief information officer David Parks received an
automated alert that a threshold had been reached - the receptionist
queue had 10 calls waiting - he called the voter services manager,
confirmed he could add several voter services operators to the
receptionist workgroup, and added them with a couple of mouse clicks.
Some 30 seconds later all 10 calls had been answered, and the office
easily handled the calls for the rest of the day.
QUOTES
Buddy Johnson, Supervisor of Elections, Hillsborough County Florida: "Our
goal was to run our communications efficiently and cost-effectively, and find
a way to adequately manage our election-day call volumes. The ShoreTel
Unified Communications system has enabled us to drive down our recurring
communications costs, integrate communications across offices, and use
monitoring and reporting to improve our productivity. We can also now easily
manage our peak volumes simply by turning on SIP trunks, which we pay for only
when we use them. Most important, we have improved service to the citizens of
Hillsborough County while saving vital tax dollars. This should be the goal
of every government agency."
John W. Combs, chairman, president and CEO, ShoreTel: "Clearly, government
agencies across the U.S. and around the world are under increasing pressure to
maintain -- and even improve -- service levels on ever-shrinking budgets. But
as the Supervisor of Elections for Hillsborough County has demonstrated, with
a ShoreTel UC system, agencies can actually improve their services while
reducing costs. Our low total cost of ownership means they can quickly recoup
system costs, while running a far leaner and more efficient organization."
For detailed information on ShoreTel products and features, click
here (http://www.shoretel.com/products/).
GOVERNMENT CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORIES
-- City of Oakland
-- Fort Worth Trans Authority
-- Superior Court of CA, Napa
-- Superior Court of CA, Monterey
-- Knox County Housing Authority
-- Portland Water District
-- City of Sioux Falls
-- Butler County, OH
-- City of North Las Vegas
-- US Army Corps of Engineers
RELATED LINKS & CONVERSATION
-- ShoreTel Features (http://www.shoretel.com/products/ip_phone_system/)
-- ShoreTel blog (http://blog.shoretel.com/)
-- ShoreTel awards (http://www.shoretel.com/about/awards.html)
About ShoreTel, Inc.
ShoreTel, Inc., (Nasdaq: SHOR) is a leading provider of Pure IP Unified
Communications solutions. ShoreTel enables companies of any size to
seamlessly integrate all communications -- voice, video, messaging and data
-- with their business processes. Independent of device or location,
ShoreTel's distributed software architecture eliminates the traditional costs,
complexity and reliability issues typically associated with other solutions.
ShoreTel continues to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction,
ease of use and manageability while driving down the overall total cost of
ownership. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has
regional offices in the United Kingdom, Sydney, Australia and Munich, Germany.
For more information, visit www.shoretel.com or call 1-877-80SHORE.
Press Contact:
Rachel Shelton
Eastwick Communications
Tel: +650-480-4069
rshelton@eastwick.com
SOURCE ShoreTel, Inc.
