Continental Airlines continues legacy of industry's first-ever customer with purchase of new Rockwell call center system; airline replaces original 23-year-old computerized ACD system.

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 9, 1996--Rockwell, the company who invented and patented the world's first digital automatic call distributor (ACD) over two decades ago, Thursday announced the sale of a networked call center system to its first- ever customer, Continental Airlines.

The sale of a Rockwell Galaxy ACD to Continental in 1973 was actually the beginning of the call center industry as we know it today.

The final decision came down to two suppliers, and Rockwell provided a more robust feature set, networking solution and substantial cost of ownership advantage over Aspect Telecommunications.

The Switching Systems Division, originally part of the Collins Radio Co. at the time of the initial sale, is replacing the world's first ACD reservations center with a state-of-the-art Spectrum ACD and supporting information systems for Continental's current reservations system located across four states.

"This sale is noteworthy for two reasons," said Larry Goodwin, vice president, reservations for Continental. "First is the fact that we selected Rockwell once again as our primary vendor of choice, and second is that we have decided to replace the original Galaxy serial no. 001 ACD system that has served us faithfully for 23 years so we can take advantage of new capabilities and move our customer service business into the next century."

The current sale involves five Spectrum ACD systems to be installed at Continental's five reservations centers located around the country.... Houston (2), Denver, Salt Lake City and Tampa. The five systems will be networked together to provide Continental with unique call-by-call routing by integrating all locations directly into the public network.

This will allow customer calls to be evenly dispersed among multiple sites by automatically identifying call load volume at each location. In addition, Continental will employ tie lines to internetwork sites and utilize intelligent overflow and call diversion when conditions warrant.

Goodwin added: "We have made dramatic improvements in our on-time performance and baggage handling processes. As our product has improved, we need to insure that the level of service we provide our customers through our reservations centers also improves. With the installation of Rockwell's Spectrum ACDs, combined with our other technology enhancements, Continental will have true state-of-the-art call center operations. When you add our outstanding people, we are a hard combination to beat."

Continental's five reservations call centers represent 4500 customer service agents processing calls. This large number, with 800 agents alone just in one Houston site, was a major factor in selecting Rockwell's unique personal announcement feature for agents. Personal announcements assist call center agents by playing a recorded announcement in the agent's own voice and synchronized to the center's application so the agent does not suffer voice burnout.

In contrast to the original Galaxy ACD of 1973, today's Spectrum system provides Continental with multiple Real Time displays on which to manage agent schedules, work shifts and agent groups. Operating call centers in 1973 was very different in that even historical reports were not commonplace.

Real Time management will assist Continental in making decisions that impact the business immediately by not having to wait long periods to respond to unforeseen situations.

Steve Panyko, Rockwell Switching Systems vice president/general manager said, "It is a tribute to Continental that they exhibited the foresight 20 years ago to become involved in the strange new world of ACD.

"That foresight led to the formation of an industry, the explosion of 800 toll-free services and the establishment of Rockwell as the world's most experienced call center vendor in business today. We are as proud of this sale as any we have ever had in our history."

Rockwell has approached the Smithsonian Institute about donating a piece of the original system for its historical wing on technology. As the world's first ACD system, it has significant value as a pioneering development that led to the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions upon billions of dollars in sales and tax revenues.

The cutover and installation of the five Spectrum systems begins in mid May at one Houston site and will proceed in a phased-in manner. All systems are expected to be networked and operational for the late summer.

Rockwell Switching Systems is a leading supplier of mission critical call center solutions. It designs, manufactures and services a family of call processing, computer-telephony integration, information collection and management, workstation applications as well as offering systems integration and consulting services.

Continental is the fifth largest airline in the United States, offering nearly 2,100 jet and express flights daily to 131 U.S. and 57 international destinations. Operating major hubs in Houston, Newark and Cleveland, Continental is strategically positioned for transcontinental travel, and offers extensive service to Latin America and Europe via its Houston and Newark gateways.

Rockwell (NYSE:ROK) is a diversified high technology company holding leadership market positions in automation, avionics, semiconductor systems, aerospace, defense electronics, and automotive component systems, with annual sales of $13 billion.

An unscientific description of the evolution of the call center industry 23 years ago and historical perspective

The call center industry, the automatic call distributor and 800 toll-free service have long been and will continue to be intertwined. AT&T introduced 800 service in 1967. Created as a technology solution to meet an anticipated shortage of telephone company operators, 800 service was never part of a specific marketing strategy. For five years it barely grew in usage and public acceptance.

Rockwell-Collins was working on a digital technology for a completely different market and application, when it was suggested that, with some modification, it might be a technological answer to an issue that the airline industry was experiencing.

That problem was the inability to provide adequate call coverage from the crude telephone systems available at the time. That plus the fact that the equipment was leased for between $5,000 and $10,000 per month. These systems had no programmability, had no call routing, were electro-mechanical and offered no management or status reports to gauge progress or productivity.

A company called Applied Data Research saw an opportunity to exploit this lack of features and developed a crude administrative system for use on AT&T equipment. It was the call center supervisor of its time and provided some crude data designed to give reservation managers system information and feedback. The system rented for $1000 per month. The catch was... if you wanted the data analyzed and interpreted... it cost an extra $500 per month.

Clearly there was a potential market here.

Interestingly, IBM saw the potential of meeting a market need with the concept of an automatic call distributor. As early as 1969, IBM published a technical paper of a new solid state ACD with sophisticated capabilities. But not convinced that 800 service would catch on with businesses or that there was a large enough market for ACDs, they never entered the market.

In 1972, a group of airlines met demanding a new way of processing telephone reservation calls. Prior to deregulation, AT&T had control of the market. In response to their demands, AT&T presented the airlines with a plan for a new generation technology automatic call distributor (ACD)... to be available in 1980... eight years away.

Before refinement of the concept and any modifications to the digital technology system it was working on, Rockwell approached the airlines with its proposal of an ACD.

Continental Airlines was the first of the group to see the potential of the new system and offered a letter of intent for five Galaxy ACD systems even before development cost estimates and architecture plans were defined. This was 1972.

It wasn't until the Rockwell ACD was introduced that 800 service began to explode. As more and more businesses took advantage of the new ability to handle and process the flood of incoming calls, the idea of a matched technology with the right network service became a double digit growth trend.

Today, Rockwell ACD systems process nearly 40 million calls daily from hundreds of companies like airlines, car rentals, retailing, insurance, banks, utilities, telephone companies and more.

CONTACT: Rockwell

Tom Mikol, 708/960-8047

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