Abt (US) – Cloud-Based Deployment Serving Multiple Sites

Industry: Market Research
Abt Associates took the decision to acquire a solution that gave them manageability, efficiency and performance by replacing their legacy dialing systems as well as their CATI solution with a centralised solution.

About Abt Associates

Abt is one of the top 20 global research firms, providing research, evaluation, program implementation, and consultancy for both private and governmental organisations and is known for its rigorous approach to solving complex challenges.

Key to Abt’s research capabilities within the US are their 450 CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) researchers, spread across five contact center locations in different states.

Abt logo

The requirements

Abt Associates had used a number of predictive dialers from different vendors but had several key concerns about the performance of the current predictive dialing solution:

  • The various dialers were not designed for compliance. Abt recognised the need to ensure better control of compliance under changing US legislation for abandoned (silent) call limits.
  • The dialers used simple dialing algorithms that needed constant supervision to keep the software running at an acceptable level of productivity.

Abt took the decision to acquire a solution that gave them manageability, efficiency, and performance by replacing their legacy dialing systems as well as their CATI solution with a centralised solution.

The replacement solution had to deliver exceptional productivity for the business whilst keeping the level of abandoned calls within legal requirements.

Abt wanted to outsource management of the solution and therefore sought to move as much IT infrastructure as possible away from on-premise solutions, with their physical equipment, ISDN connections and associated support contracts, to the cloud. Amazon AWS was their preferred cloud solution, delivering better scalability, flexible pricing structure, and security, a major concern when working on government and other sensitive projects. The solution had to be designed from the outset to be cloud-based.

Abt’s interviewers were primarily based in five contact centers, but Abt also wanted to be able to locate agents at home.

The Sytel solution

A two-week Proof of Concept (POC) demonstrated that the Sytel predictive dialer was able to exceed performance expectations, providing exceptional agent productivity whilst remaining within the required abandon rate. As a result, Abt Associates chose to proceed with the solution, deploying all elements of the solution to the AWS cloud. AWS cloud management was provided by a certified AWS partner. Sytel provided dedicated engineers and a dedicated technical account manager to manage the implementation.

Sytel’s software suite, Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC), was then accessible to all five of the Abt CATI call centres, as well as to outsourced contact centre providers and home workers.

All client aspects of the solution are web-based, resulting in minimal footprint on each agent’s PC. Agent phone extensions were connected to the dialer using WebRTC, simply by connecting a USB headset to their PC and opening a browser window.

Sytel has integrations with all the leading CATI vendors. Abt’s chosen CATI system is Confirmit Horizons, and Sytel’s extensive, ready-to-go integration with Confirmit provides outbound functionality as well as inbound and Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

The telephony connection from dialer to the public network was made over the internet through an IPSec Virtual Private Network (VPN) to the carrier, Broadband Dynamics (BBD), ensuring that voice traffic was secured. The combination of BBD connections to multiple gateways and Sytel’s highly flexible telephony routing ensured that the solution was highly resilient and would cope with an outage on the PSTN by routing calls to alternate gateways.

Sytel and Confirmit cloud-based dialer and CATI platform

Sytel and Confirmit cloud-based dialer and CATI platform

The result

The project was delivered on time and to budget, and following a progressive ramp-up of users, all interviewers were using the platform by June 2019.

The smooth deployment and immediate business impact was recognised within Abt Associates, and the internal Abt team won an award for the project.

Editorial update: The move to cloud delivery meant that Abt were well prepared when the Covid-19 crisis hit in 2020, and workers across the globe were required to work from home wherever possible.

Damon Anderson, Abt’s business sponsor for the implementation, commented

“The Sytel/ Confirmit/ AWS implementation has been a huge success, and the timing of our move from a physical to a virtual call center environment could not have been better. Our data collection operations have continued effectively and without disruption. At the same time, we kept our interviewers safe and maintained the highest standards of monitoring, supervision, and training.

 

The move has enabled us to scale up well past the capacity of our physical call centers. We have broadened our hiring base to add capacity across time zones. And it’s much easier to hire interviewers with physical disabilities that perhaps limit mobility. In sum, the implementation has enabled us to provide continuity for our clients while producing the same high quality results that Abt has always delivered.”

About Abt Associates

Abt Associates is a global consulting and research firm that uses data and bold thinking to improve the quality of people’s lives worldwide. From increasing crop yields and combatting infectious disease to ensuring safe drinking water and promoting access to affordable housing—and more—we partner with clients and communities to tackle their most complex challenges.

About Confirmit

Confirmit provides customer experience and market research software delivered as either cloud or on premise solutions. Confirmit solutions leverage various feedback channels including CATI. Confirmit products have won numerous accolades in their industry segments, including AIR2019 (Achievement in Insight and Research).

About Broadband Dynamics

Broadband Dynamics is a telecommunications network built exclusively for high volume, commercial voice customers. BBD is one of the largest SIP voice carriers in North America. Over the past 20+ years BBD has helped some of the largest contact centers in the world to reduce their long distance expense and improve profitability, while delivering the highest levels of network quality and a more personalized level of service.

About Amazon AWS

Amazon AWS has secured the leading position as a global cloud provider and enable business worldwide to provide reliable, scalable web services. It has maintained its position as leader in the Cloud IaaS Gartner Magic Quadrant for 8 consecutive years.

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) - multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ - rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale
  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers - global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc - fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Automated, ‘best available’ decisions to manage agents and balance work load, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and 'best-available' decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care