Amerix brings client agencies online at low cost with Cisco IP Contact Center.

When Maryland-based Amerix Corporation, a leading debt-management service provider offering back-office services and support to four of the country's major Credit Counseling Agencies (CCAs), wanted to bring its client agencies online cost-effectively, it selected the Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC). The primary reason was its desire to utilize its already existing IP infrastructure.

For years, Amerix provided the CCAs with complete call center services on an outsourced basis, taking all customer-service and account-origination calls in its two large call centers. To operate more efficiently however, Amerix decided in June 2001 to transition all counseling and account-origination consumer contacts to the CCAs' accredited counselors so they could handle the calls directly.

The challenge was that the nonprofit CCAs didn't have the funds available to invest in expensive traditional call-center infrastructures. With Cisco IPCC, Amerix enabled the CCAs to install low-cost IP telephony components and use Amerix's IP network to link into the Amerix contact center environment -- even though the contact center itself was comprised of legacy equipment.

"When we looked at the technologies available, we found that the only viable solution was a data-centric, packet-switched IP telephony solution," says Bob Riess, Chief Information Officer at Amerix. "And it has delivered two key advantages. First, our variable call costs are now fixed, lowering our costs. Second, it has relieved much of the capital burden on our client agencies. The only hardware they now need to receive a call, besides the telephone itself, is a router and a switch, which they need anyway to maintain an Internet connection for corporate e-mail."

With the Cisco solution, Amerix has achieved its overall goal as a service provider -- to provide client CCAs with a reliable contact-center environment at minimum cost and with high availability. "The capital investment required of the agencies has been well within their reach, and as a result of our ability to manage costs, the recurring pass-through costs to the agencies are very manageable for them," says Riess. "This permits them to focus on consumer needs while we tend to the technology."