Going to home-based agents saves money and boosts productivity by $20,000 per agent/per year compared with forcing staff to commute to costly-to-provide cube row warehouses, plus it provides unparalleled flexibility in meeting variable demand. Going to managed voice over IP from traditional TDM/PSTN to support these virtual workers saves even more resources and permits greater ability to control contact flow to meet changing needs.

 

Popular virtual retailer 1-800 FLOWERS.COM, relies on home-based agents both internal and outsourced to provide customer care for the above reasons. Unfortunately like most such firms, even high quality ones such as itself it has been hit hard by the severe economic downturn. 1-800 FLOWERS.COM recorded a $22.2 million net loss in fourth quarter 2009 ending in June compared with a $4.3 million profit in the same period in 2008. It also posted a $98.4 million loss for the full year 2009 in contrast to a $21.1 profit a year earlier.

 

To reduce costs while maintaining the quality of service that made it famous 1-800 FLOWERS.COM increased its reliance on home agents. And it deployed Nectar’s Enterprise Session Management (nectar/ESM) VoIP-based solution.

 

 “The Nectar (News - Alert)/ESM solution has allowed us to begin consolidating our voice and data networks while providing the on-demand flexibility to handle our seasonal needs,” says 1-800 FLOWERS.COM’s CIO Steve Bozzo.

 

1-800-FLOWERS.COM had been paying costly fees to enable such as Internet access and long-distance toll charges to support its home agents, accentuated by typical if drastic call volume peaks that are normal in its field. The retailer also paid year-round for the additional voice circuits that were only utilized during the heights of its sales cycles: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and the December holidays. During the holiday season the agents handle tens of thousands of calls every day, all of which were carrying a per call toll charge. 

 

The company has been using an Avaya (News - Alert) IP Agent platform but in a dual-connect mode, which utilizes home agents’ home phone lines to make and receive calls. The retailer also maintains a Citrix solution to deliver its Avaya plus point of sale applications. Within this Avaya-Citrix environment, the home agents’ VoIP phones will only operate with limited functionality, because the Citrix environment does not support VoIP applications. By operating in this limited functionality mode, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM paid toll charges for every call routed from the global call center to the home agents. 

 

Nectar created a virtual dial plan of more than 20,000 local Direct Inward Dials (DIDs) and custom built a soft phone application for the home workers. With the virtual dial plan, the home agents now use Nectar’s virtual local number whenever they launch the Citrix-based soft phone. As a result the deployment of this virtual dial plan effectively eliminated the per-call, long-distance toll charges across the home agent network.

 

At the same time 1-800-FLOWERS.COM also maintained a large number of telephony access circuits across multiple Avaya Communication Manager deployments.  These access circuits were fully utilized during the holiday peaks, yet remained significantly underutilized during the remainder of the year.

 

Nectar’s SIP-trunking, nationwide DID coverage and self-management portal now enables 1-800-FLOWERS.COM to trunk on-demand pay-as-you-go during peak calling seasons and eliminate those little-used circuits and the monthly costs associated with them. With Nectar, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM now utilizes its IP network for voice services. The net result is drastically reduced telecom spending.

 

“We continuously hear about the cost efficiencies of home-based workers, but in the Avaya-Citrix environment of 1-800-FLOWERS. COM, and so many call centers, the home-based agents were accruing additional toll charges for every call they handled,” says Joseph Fuccillo, Chief Technology Officer for Nectar. “Paying those extra per-call fees drove the company’s phone bills through the roof and really made the model cost-prohibitive.” 

 

“With Nectar, we made the home-agent model work for 1-800-FLOWERS.COM by eliminating those long-distance toll charges, “added Fuccillo. “By greatly reducing the cost for U.S. based home-agents, we’ve put the domestic model nearly on par with overseas rates, which enables 1-800-FLOWERS.COM to continue employing workers right here in the U.S.”

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