Calabrio Helps Taction Create the Next-Generation Contact Center (email this article)

Montreal, Quebec - December 13, 2005 - Calabrio (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies) , Inc, a leading provider of contact center workforce management (WFM) solutions, today announced positive results by Taction, a premier contact center services company. With Calabrio, Taction has streamlined its operations as its business continues to grow - now finding new efficiencies, driving greater productivity and building a more employee-friendly workplace.

Based in Maine, Taction is known for providing its clients with “The Taction Value”, delivering a higher average order value along with a higher number of reorders, while creating remarkable customer satisfaction, one positive experience after another. Since 1983, this industry pioneer has served many premium clients, including such trusted brands as Polaroid, American Express Gift Cheques and Cracker Barrell Old Country Store.

Taction has been unusually tech-saavy and created many of its own systems, such as a workforce management process that did an excellent job at forecasting call volumes. But the company eventually needed a more efficient forecasting and scheduling technology that could scale with its fast-growing business. Further, as a contact center outsourcer, Taction has extremely demanding requirements from a diverse client-base that currently includes Samsonite, the State of Maine's Office of Tourism, Harbor Sweets, Cuddledown, The Boyds Collection and other high-end specialty companies.

Steve White, Taction's chief executive officer, explained, “Given our deep experience with technology, we knew exactly what capabilities we needed and were careful to do our homework in researching possible solutions. After our year-long search, Calabrio beat out a field of a dozen competitors, including the largest workforce management vendors, on features, functionality and price. Other criteria included a five-year estimate of total cost of ownership, seventy-plus point questionnaire, Dun & Bradstreet credit ratings and more. But most of all - beyond the numbers and features - when we visited Calabrio to meet their people, we saw that it was a natural fit between our two cultures and spirit of excellence.”

Taction's results with Calabrio have been immediate and substantial. Previously, it relied on spreadsheets for forecasting and scheduling, which eventually became time-consuming as the company grew. With Calabrio, Taction only needs half the amount of time to do the job, translating into an extra 20 hours a week that managers can spend on more critical work. With accuracy rates of up to 99.5%, Calabrio's software eliminates anomalies in historical data for more precise forecasts and effective schedules, as well as automatically importing and accounting for data from other contact center systems. Taction purposely overstaffs in order to maintain service levels but is now able to be more precise and cut that extra margin to a minimum, thereby saving on labor costs.

Further, Calabrio has helped the company continue to promote an employee-friendly workplace, an area important to Taction's culture. Work schedules can now be reviewed online much earlier by agents, are easier to understand and factor in agent preferences. Calabrio has also optimized Taction's daily “go-home-early” list, which gives flexibility to agents in accommodating emergencies or last-minute needs. Calabrio's real-time visibility and intra-day dynamic trending enable accurate and faster forecasting of the day's call volume so that the employees who want to can potentially go home sooner.

White continued, “Our experience with Calabrio now validates our decision to invest in their solutions. Besides now having all the functionalities we need in a single and integrated platform, Calabrio has consistently delivered on timely support and followup. The way they conduct their users' groups shows us that they value our input in evolving their solutions to meet real customer needs - our needs.”

René LeBel, chief executive officer and founder of Calabrio, added, “We're gratified that a company such as Taction, who knows technology and has the most stringent requirements, did their due diligence and concluded that we offered the best solution. We know that technology alone doesn't give you competitive advantage - we are partners in our customers' success by ensuring that the solution is properly deployed to their needs, that their people are properly trained and that we are standing by to help where needed.”

About Calabrio, Inc.
Calabrio's workforce management solutions are used by companies worldwide, such as Blue Cross, Direct TV, Mastercard, MBNA, Sears and hundreds more. From our start in 1995 - and now with offices in Canada, United States and Europe - Calabrio is one of the very first to give multi-site and multi-channel management capabilities to today's evolving contact centers. Unlike competitors, Calabrio offers an unmatched forecasting and scheduling accuracy of up to 99.9% as well as a full range of additional capabilities at no extra charge, such as skills- and performance-based scheduling, KPIs, payroll integration, and much more. As a result, our customers can dramatically improve productivity, employee satisfaction and efficiency, which in turn drive customer service and profitability. For more information, please visit www.calabrio.com.