Cisco Unified IP Phones 7900 Series

Johnson Inc. is one of Canada's leading providers of personal and group insurance and benefits. Established in 1880, the firm is well known for embracing high technology, the most advanced customer management techniques, and outperforming its competitors in productivity applications.

Since 2000, Johnson Inc. has embarked on an aggressive growth campaign, opening or acquiring dozens of offices across Canada. The company currently employs some 600 people in more than 40 branch offices whose locations extend from the head office in St. John's, Newfoundland, to Langley, British Columbia. The firm serves more than a half million clients. Four regional branch offices each employ about 120 staff, while smaller community branch offices are staffed by between one and four people. The wide geographic range reflects Johnson Inc.'s corporate strategy to physically provide local services in the communities in which it operates.

"Clients consider their insurance coverage a very personal thing, and one of our strengths is that we don't force people to do business a certain way," explains C.C. Huang, president and CEO of Johnson Inc. "We offer many avenues to reach us: telephone, e-mail, or through our Web site, as well as direct physical contact. This wide choice of approaches appeals to everyone from our urban clients to our remote, rural customer base."

The company didn't want its rapid expansion to jeopardize its ability to offer the personalized service on which its reputation had been built. But to help ensure this, Johnson Inc.'s IT staff knew a different kind of network would be needed. "We realized we needed more control and flexibility in our communications structure," Huang says.

Johnson Inc. had already deployed a centralized WAN infrastructure from Cisco Systems® in its Newfoundland headquarters and intended to add intelligent services and advanced IP Communication applications as they became available. But the company had not yet started network build-outs to regional or branch offices.

Johnson Inc. also maintained separate voice and data communication networks. But the Centrex-based telephone system, owned and operated by a wide variety of telecommunications companies, had become increasingly inefficient and costly to maintain. The company's sales call centers were experiencing extremely heavy call volumes-from 5,000 to 10,000 calls a month depending on the season. However, half of these calls were typically service calls that needed to be rerouted to branch offices. Not only did rerouting the calls take time away from central sales staff, which limited the time staff could devote to new business opportunities, but clients were frustrated when they could not be helped during their initial call. Facing long wait times or inadvertently dropped calls, some customers just gave up, but Huang had no way of determining actual numbers because the telcos could not provide call statistics.

Huang and his IT staff realized that they had a strong business case to expand into IP Communications, as connecting with customers was a critical component of their service-based business. Reaching that decision required vision, however, because at the time, few networking vendors had yet recognized the potential of IP Communications.

"We looked at a few companies besides Cisco®, such as Nortel, Mitel, and Lucent, but it seemed to us that there was a lot of uncertainty with future development with these companies, whereas Cisco considered IP Communications a strategic technology," explains Glen Ryan, IT Network Operations team leader for Johnson Inc. "We knew we could take advantage of the Cisco WAN we already had in place and continue to expand our IP Communications footprint across Canada as need and budget allowed. And Cisco was able to help us design a plan that fit with our regionalized business structure."

Cisco recommended Aliant, an experienced information communications technology (ICT) consulting and services company serving Atlantic Canada, to implement the plan. An early proponent of voice over IP (VoIP) communications, Aliant had years of hands-on experience, which was exactly what Johnson IT staff needed to roll out their ambitious ideas. "We were the first Canadian company to install IP Communications on such a grand scale across the country," Huang says.

Aliant installed a pilot IP Communications solution at the St. John's headquarters with a Cisco CallManager Server, Cisco Unity™ Voicemail Server, and a dozen Cisco IP phones. Additional Cisco IP phones were installed at several of the company's Ontario branch offices to test voice quality across the WAN, initially without any quality of service (QoS) or compression features on the lines. Pleased with the results, the Johnson IT staff decided to take IP Communications cross-country.

For high availability and redundancy, three regional Cisco CallManager server clusters handle all central call-processing functions for associated branch offices. All sites are interconnected over the IP WAN, so calls charged at local toll rates can be automatically routed to other regional branch offices as call loads vary.

Windows-based Cisco IP SoftPhone Desktop Software turns agent and administrative staff PCs into full-featured telephones. In addition, the software powers the Cisco IP 7960 phones at the call centers. The Cisco Unity server application, which integrates with Microsoft Outlook, allows employees to listen to e-mail over the telephone, or check voice messages from the Internet, thereby increasing their productivity while improving customer service and responsiveness.

Last year, Johnson Inc. won the Telecom Management & Industry Commitment "Cost Recovery Project of the Year" award for their IP Communications implementation from the Angus TeleManagement Group, an independent Canadian telecommunications consulting firm, and publisher of the national industry newsletter Telecom Update. The insurance firm was one of five Canadian organizations recognized by Angus for "great end-user achievements demonstrated through outstanding technology deployments and enhanced management practices."

However, when Huang accepted the award, he was quick to point out that, in his eyes, the real story was no longer about cost recovery. "We are already experiencing annual cost savings of [CA]$400,000 by reducing long distance costs, maintenance fees, and costs for adds, moves, and changes," he reports, "but we're viewing this much more as a strategic tool moving forward."

It's not hard to see why. Johnson Inc. employees are enthusiastic about the benefits of their centralized IP Communication applications. Kelly North, New Business Call Center manager, relates an important example, "Our customer relationship management [CRM] application identifies incoming clients' home numbers and automatically redirects them to the appropriate service representative. My sales staff is thrilled because it gives them more time to provide the highest quality of service and quote and sell our insurance services."

Centralized IP productivity applications also help smooth workload fluctuations due to regional storms, fires, or other disasters, eliminating the need to increase staffing. "Instead of having to hire, train, and license new staff as a region's call volume increases, we can look at other regions where the call volume is lower and redirect calls to those queue lines," North says. This capability not only relieves stress at busy branch offices, it helps staff in other regions that aren't getting the same volume of sales calls. Customers are better served because they are immediately connected to an experienced staff member who can answer their questions. If the client's personal representative is not available, the client's profile is automatically transferred along with the call to another agent who now has all the information he or she needs to take care of that client's business.

Centralized IT management has also kept IT personnel costs low. Huang points out that while the company revenue has grown 300 percent in the last five years through acquisition and new business development, staffing has increased by only about 10 percent.

Their Cisco IP infrastructure has also helped support Johnson Inc.'s aggressive expansion strategy by providing the latest communications technologies to new employees and offices so they quickly become part of the team of productive employees. Huang and Ryan have received excellent feedback from remote office workers whose branch technology exactly matches the technology at headquarters, helping keep productivity and employee satisfaction high across all locations.

Laura Monk leads the Johnson Inc.'s national service team, which provides support to branches and respond to policyholders' calls after regular business hours. She describes additional centralized management advantages: "The Cisco IP Communications solution gives me the tools to evaluate the service we provide. For example, with my real-time Cisco IP Phone Supervisor set, I have the flexibility to see who is working and what the call volume is like from any location. This capability allows me to manage my team more effectively, to reach higher levels of service. When I travel, my staff feels secure knowing that I am accessible to them no matter where I am."

"Information is power, and we now have the tools and opportunity to evaluate and respond to customer call behaviors never before available, as well as discover new approaches to improving our customer service," Huang says. As a result, the new IP Communications solution has changed some of the ways the company handles its business. For example, the IT staff discovered that, due to a voice message used at one location, they were losing over 100 frustrated callers a day. After changing the message, call rates jumped back to expected levels. And because the Cisco IP Communications solution is built on open standards, it provides the flexibility to customize and develop Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications. "When someone in the contact centers or on the administrative staff asks the IT staff to create something new or unique," adds Ryan, "we've never had to say no."