Download City of San Diego Case Study

VPI Communications Recording Eystems
Enable State-of-the-Art Call Centers for the
City of San Diego
Customer: City of San Diego
Industry: Government
State: CA
Business Profile
San Diego is one of the ten
largest cities in the U.S., with a
population of nearly 2.5 million
spread over an area of more
than 330 square miles.
Business Challenge
The City of San Diego's water
department and treasurer's
office collection department
faced rapidly escalating
workloads.
San Diego is one of the ten largest cities in the U.S., with a population of nearly
2.5 million spread over an area of more than 330 square miles. The City of San
Diego's water department and treasurer's office collection department faced
rapidly escalating workloads. San Diego Data Processing set-up state-of-the-art
call centers which included VPI's powerful digital call recording solution.
Business Profile
The City of San Diego's strong economy, diverse population, great educational
institutions, unsurpassed quality of life, and world-renowned location make it the
ideal place to do business, to work, and to live. Because of its highly-educated
workforce and mix of high-tech industry and recreational assets, a marketing
consortium of high-tech industries has dubbed San Diego "Technology's Perfect
Climate."
San Diego is one of the ten largest cities in the U.S., with a population of nearly
2.5 million spread over an area of more than 330 square miles. Providing highquality services to San Diego's growing population is a constant challenge for the
city's many departments and agencies.
Challenge
Significant Benefits
The City of San Diego's water department and treasurer's office collection
department faced rapidly escalating workloads. The water department today has
34 call center representatives and six supervisors who field an average of 1,500
calls daily from the city's water and sewer service customers - with up to 2,900
calls on its busiest days. The collection department in the treasurer's office
employs 27 agents and five supervisors to resolve thousands of calls per day.
The specific requirements for the city's recording solution included:

Solution Overview
San Diego Data Processing setup state-of-the-art call centers
which included VPI's powerful
digital call recording solution.


The highest possible quality and reliability for the recordings in an easy-to-use,
low maintenance design.
The ability to record calls onto reliable, long-term storage media, with
exceptionally fast access times for retrieving archived calls.
A flexible reporting package to monitor call recording and to archive media
activity and various call information including call averages by agent or group.
Solution
To keep pace with increasing call volumes, San Diego Data Processing, a city-owned organization which handles
San Diego's data processing and telecommunications needs, set-up state-of-the-art call centers for the water
department and the treasurer's office collection department. Included in each call center is a powerful digital call
recording, logging and monitoring solution designed and installed by VPI.
Providing the backbone for the city's telecommunications infrastructures is a large PBX voice network and a wide
area network (WAN). Linking 26 locations, the PBX provides 5-digit dialing and centralized voice mail for
approximately 10,000 employees in various city departments and agencies. The two call centers are connected
to this network.
Once the city decided it needed call recording, logging and monitoring, it solicited proposals from a number of
contractors. VPI was selected to integrate its Digital Voice Logger into the water department and treasurer's
office collection department call centers.
The recording solutions in the two call centers will allow the city to instantly retrieve and play back specific calls
when investigating and evaluating customer calls.
In addition, the treasurer's office collection department expects to use call recording as a training tool to improve
the communication skills and responsiveness of its personnel.
Building a unique solution for the city. VPI proposed a unique configuration that provides the city's water
department and the treasurer's office collection department with comprehensive and highly flexible recording
capabilities.
The Digital Voice Logger is built around a computer telephony integration (CTI) server, which communicates with
an Aspect automated call distributor (ACD) over a TCP/IP connection. Two VPI servers are used - one to
passively monitor the T1 lines connecting the ACD-based call center to the city's voice network; the other to
connect in parallel with Aspect TeleSets and WinSets, (PC phones that some agents use to handle calls). Both
VPI servers are linked to the CTI server to receive the real-time call events and other information needed to
determine when to record a call. VPI's CTI channel manager monitors these call events, using inputs such as
Automatic Number Identification (ANI), Dialed Number Information Service (DNIS), and Agent ID to ensure
prompt and accurate call retrieval. The combination of the city's PBX voice network, the WAN and the Aspect
WinSets presented significant engineering challenges. VPI's highly creative recording solution has
performed well for both call centers.
All calls to the treasurer's office collection department are answered by an Aspect interactive voice response
(IVR) system, which prompts the caller to enter his or her account number. The IVR system routes the call to an
available customer service representative, who receives an instant "screen-pop" of pertinent account information
and caller history.
If an incoming call is designated for recording, the VPI Digital Logger monitors the line for an agent to answer
the call. The moment the call is answered, the logger starts recording and key information such as ANI, DNIS,
trunk number and the caller's account number are stored in the solution's SQL-based database. As agents
transfer calls and put callers on hold, the VPI solution turns the recording on and off, and keeps track of the true
call times (including silent periods) for more accurate playback, without wasting storage space.
To provide reliable storage plus quick access to archived calls, VPI incorporated an ultra-fast, optical DVD-RAM
device that can be modified into the solution. The media provides access to any calls within ten seconds, can be
rewritten more than 100,000 times, has a shelf life of approximately 30 years and an incredibly low cost per
megabyte.
Making the right call. The VPI digital recording, logging and monitoring solution has proven to be the right call
for the city of San Diego's water department and treasurer's office collection department. Service levels in both
departments have improved, and steadily increasing call volumes are being handled more effectively and
efficiently.
As the city continues to grow and its requirements expand, VPI looks forward to providing innovative call
recording solutions to help meet the needs of cities across the nation.
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