IPcelerate.com

Customer: Middle Atlantic Products, Inc.

About the Customer

Middle Atlantic Products, Inc. is a manufacturer of engineered mounting products including racks for home theatres and electronic equipment. Founded in 1979, Middle Atlantic maintains its manufacturing, administrative and customer service functions in Fairfield, NJ, with additional facilities located in Illinois and California. Product is sold through a well-established distribution network, and the company delivers product nationwide with its own fleet of regional delivery trucks.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

Middle Atlantic migrated to VoIP four and a half years ago after determining the technology made it easier to converge their voice and data networks. They have been very pleased with the flexibility and option VoIP has provided the organization.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

In 2006, Middle Atlantic moved into a new, 500,000 square foot facility and experienced a potential life- threatening situation that caused them to evaluate their emergency management capabilities. An employee called 911 from within the building, and the emergency medical personnel that responded were not able to locate this person in a timely manner. Middle Atlantic knew they needed to find a solution that could identify the location of the 911 call and quickly dispatch assistance. After researching a variety of options, they selected IPcelerate’s Internal 911 Alert Notification solution because the IPsession server could not only address emergency management, but also offered a host of other embedded business solutions with the company could deploy including call recording and conference bridging.

IPcelerate Solutions

The IPcelerate Internal 911 Alert Notification feature resides on the IPsession server and allows Middle Atlantic to quickly locate the phone from which the 911 call was made and automically alert key personnel about the emergency situation. When emergency medical persons arrive at the facility, they are easily directed to the employee in need of assistance. This solution now effectively manages 911 situations for the company, creating a safer environment for their people.

In addition to the 911 solution, Middle Atlantic is also using IPsession to set up and initiate conference calls. Weekly sales calls are now initaited through the Pre-Scheduled Conference feature, in which phones numbers (IP phones, cellur numbers, etc) for each sales team member are pre-configured into a group and automatically conferenced together each Monday morning. This solution has increased productivity and time management by bringing the large, and remote, team together quickly and easily.

Middle Atlantic also deployed the IPstudio server to meet its call recording needs in its contact center and for its collections team. The contact center has recently begun taking verbal telephone orders for product and now uses On-Demand call recording to record those transactions. On-Demand call recording is also used on a regular basis with the collections team. During a collection call, personnel often experience a need to record a call midway through a conversation depending on the content of the call. With the touch of an icon on the collector’s IP phone’s dashboard, a call can be recorded from the beginning, no matter when the call recording was initiated. This solution has increased customer service and decreased potential loss of revenue by offering a means of reviewing conversations during the customer dispute or collections process.

New Telephony Experience

The VoIP telephony environment in Middle Atlantic has made key business functions easier and allowed the company to increase productivity, provide a higher level of customer service and create a safer environment for employees. The dashboards on IP phones in the contact center and collections introduced a new icon-driven business telephony experience for employees, making the process of recording calls a simple, one-touch process.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

Middle Atlantic is interested in expanding its use of conferencing through the IPsession server, eventually migrating all conference call initiation and scheduling to IPsession. They have also considered using Dial Out functionality for weather-related announcements.