Avaya Helps Financial Services Firms Use Intelligent Communications to Succeed in a Shifting Marketplace

Financial sector accelerates evolution to IP telephony; Forty percent of financial services firms will increase spending on IP technologies and services this year. More Banks, Securities Firms and Credit Unions Delivering “Right Here, Right Now” Communications using Avaya IP and Contact Center Applications

20-Sep-2006 - BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – As nontraditional players emerge in the financial services industry, and a new generation of customers arrive seeking faster, easier access to information, today’s financial organizations are facing a rapidly changing market. Many financial services firms – including banking, securities and insurance companies – are turning to IP telephony and contact center applications from Avaya to help them succeed in an era of intelligent communications.

“Companies are finding they can’t thrive or survive by standing still,” said Averell Elliot, vice president, financial services sector for Avaya (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of business communications software, systems and services. “Aggressive new Internet and brick-and-mortar players are entering financial services markets, and customer expectations are going way up. More financial companies are turning to Avaya to get the ’right here, right now’ communications” required in this arena"

The financial services sector plans to shift their spending to IP telephony at a greater rate than most industries. Forty percent of financial services firms will increase spending on IP technology and services this year.1

Avaya is helping a range of financial services organizations to succeed in this changing marketplace. Several of them share their experiences:

Mobility Solutions Make The Difference for Financial Professionals
Cascadia Capital, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, specializes in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions for emerging growth and middle market companies. With their investment bankers always on the go, Cascadia had to find new ways to remain accessible to clients and information regardless of their location.

Cascadia meets the challenges of its mobile workforce with Avaya IP Office, a converged voice and data system designed for smaller sites. Through a new “mobile twinning” feature of IP Office, Cascadia team members can choose to have incoming office calls ring simultaneously on a cell phone, home phone or remote handset so they can stay connected even when away from their desk.

“This means our clients can use a single number to reach our bankers whether they are in the office, working from a hotel room or running to catch a plane,” said Christopher Bettin, director of information technology for Cascadia Capital.

As an added benefit for mobile workers, Cascadia integrated Avaya IP Office with the company’s Microsoft Exchange email application so workers have a unified email and voicemail inbox. This lets investment bankers use their handheld wireless devices for quicker access to Avaya voicemail using their email account.

Avaya IP Helps Credit Unions Link Branches For ’Always-on’ Communications
KeyPoint Credit Union, based in Santa Clara, Calif., serves more than 3,200 companies and 80,000 members across the U.S. and the globe. With an IP telephony and contact center solution powered by Avaya Communication Manager, the company has overcome the challenges associated with formerly isolated office operations, which in the past required customers to hang up and dial a different phone number to reach a given specialist. Today, KeyPoint contact center agents can connect customers directly to financial specialists anywhere – whether the subject-matter expert works at a remote office, home office, or KeyPoint business partner location.

“We can’t afford to send a customer call to voice mail or ask customers to dial another phone number to reach who they need,” said Juli Anne Callis, chief operating officer, KeyPoint Credit Union. “With our intelligent, IP-based network, we can efficiently route thousands of callers and get them to the right resource, seamlessly.”

The mobility capabilities of the Avaya solution also play a central role in enhancing KeyPoint’s ability to serve customers 24/7. For example, if an employee based in San Jose needs to work in KeyPoint’s Santa Clara headquarters for the week, he can activate Avaya Extension-to-Cellular to extend incoming business calls to a cell phone or IP phone in the new location.

Another credit union, Truliant Federal Credit Union – which has 25 offices in five southeastern states serving more than 170,000 members – uses IP trunking to deliver headquarters-like communications to its busy branch financial centers. Truliant uses survivable Avaya G150 gateways to link branch offices to the headquarters communications network in Winston-Salem, N.C. The survivability capabilities of each gateway help ensure branch staff stays in touch with members, even if connectivity to the corporate network is lost.

“The gateways are amazing and extremely cost-effective,” said Tammie Bennett, network services manager for Truliant. “I can buy a gateway, put it in the branch office, and that site immediately becomes a part of our network. Staff everywhere are linked closer, and we can deliver better service to our members.”

Financial Giant Speeds Customer Service with Avaya Contact Center Applications
When global insurance and financial company ING sought a customer service solution for its Mexico operations, they turned to Avaya for a better way to connect customers to the right agent at the right time. With branches throughout Mexico, ING Comercial América needed to centralize its customer care operations to improve efficiency and service. The company established a contact center in Mexico City with 305 employees and 229 agent positions that handle an average of 220,000 calls each month. Car accident reports, health insurance inquiries, pension information and tele-sales are just some of the services provided via the contact center, in addition to services for ING employees such as IT and HR support.

To manage call routing, Avaya Customer Interaction Suite contact center software allows incoming calls to be automatically distributed based on preset parameters. This gets callers more quickly and efficiently connected to the agent who can best attend to their needs. For example, 80% of calls related to accidents are quickly identified and attended to in less than 10 seconds, and in the case of customer service, less than 20 seconds.

Another benefit that ING has obtained from Avaya technology has been a reduction from 8% to 2% in the call drop-out levels. Reducing time has had a significant impact on customer satisfaction, as well as resource management and costs.

About Avaya
Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than one million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500®. Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet Protocol telephony systems and communications software applications and services.

Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications - and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services - Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya Web site: http://www.avaya.com.

1Forrester report: The State of Enterprise Telecom and Network Adoption, Business Technographics North America. June 26, 2006.

Contact Information

Jonathan Varman

Media Relations

Avaya Inc.

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