Western & Southern Financial Group Reduces Operational Costs Using Interactive Intelligence Communications Software

Western & Southern Financial Group has reported reduced costs as a result of deploying the all-in-one IP communications software suite from Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ).

Western & Southern, a financial services company that provides life insurance, retirement planning, and investment products, has deployed the Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center® (CIC) software suite to support its 5,000 employees located at 185 offices throughout the U.S., including 180 sales offices.

“Based on the many benefits of our initial CIC deployment, we’ve expanded its use company-wide,” said Western & Southern’s manager of communication services, Tom Frenette. “In our call center alone, deploying CIC’s interactive voice response application enabled us to update recording options in-house, which saved us $70,000 in third-party fees.”

With its additional applications, CIC has also helped Western & Southern improve customer service.

“CIC’s remote office support has given us business continuity and ensured that we no longer lose calls,” Frenette said. “By enabling distributed employees to share voice mails, faxes and call recordings across the network, CIC has also enhanced collaboration, thus further improving our service.”

In addition, Western & Southern has reported improved employee training as a result of deploying CIC.

“CIC has given us the most flexible and feature-rich communications solution for training and managing our 2,600 sales agents located across 180 offices,” Frenette said. “And because all employees now use a single communications system across sites, we can more effectively track, record and manage sales leads, thus further improving our bottom line.”

Western & Southern first deployed CIC at its rapidly growing customer relations center in Cincinnati. The company then expanded its deployment to several of its subsidiaries’ offices. This year it deployed the system for its sales offices.

“Before our recent expansion of CIC, our remote offices were using a Panasonic key system, along with thousands of POTS (plain old telephone service) lines that were costing us approximately a million dollars a year to maintain,” Frenette said.

In addition to contact center automation features such as interactive voice response and automatic call distribution, Western & Southern uses CIC for presence, quality monitoring and scoring, outbound and blended dialing, and Web self-service and e-mail auto response.

About Western & Southern Financial Group

Western & Southern Financial Group (Western & Southern) is a Cincinnati-based diversified family of financial services companies with assets owned, managed and under our care in excess of $49 billion as of Sept. 30, 2010. A Fortune 500 company, Western & Southern has received Standard & Poor’s AA+ Very Strong rating (one of the eight highest-rated life insurance groups in the world), A.M. Best’s A+ Superior rating, Fitch’s AA Very Strong rating and Moody’s Aa3 Excellent rating, all with a Stable outlook. With a heritage dating to 1888, the group’s affiliates include The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company; Western-Southern Life Assurance Company; Capital Analysts Incorporated;1, 2 Columbus Life Insurance Company; Eagle Realty Group, LLC; Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc.;1 Fort Washington Savings Company;3 IFS Financial Services, Inc.; Integrity Life Insurance Company; The Lafayette Life Insurance Company; National Integrity Life Insurance Company; Touchstone Advisors, Inc.;1 Touchstone Securities, Inc.;2 and W&S Financial Group Distributors, Inc. For more information, visit www.westernsouthern.com. Western & Southern is the title sponsor of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters and Women’s Open tennis tournaments.

1 A registered investment advisor.

2 A registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC.

3 Member FDIC.

Ratings refer to the claims-paying ability of the insurance company and not to the safety, stability or performance of any investment product.

About Interactive Intelligence

Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is a global provider of unified business communications solutions for contact center automation, enterprise IP telephony, and business process automation. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 3,500 customers worldwide. Interactive Intelligence is among Software Magazine’s 2010 Top 500 Global Software and Services Suppliers, and Forbes Magazine’s 2010 Best Small Companies in America. The company is also positioned in the leaders’ quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide report (Feb. 22, 2010). Interactive Intelligence employs approximately 800 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has 16 offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +1 317.872.3000 or info@inin.com; on the Net: www.inin.com.

This release may contain certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in the company's SEC filings.

Interactive Intelligence Inc. is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

ININ-G

Interactive Intelligence Grp., Inc. (NASDAQ:ININ)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2024 to Jun 2024