The Timken Company, a global manufacturer of bearings and alloy steels, is reducing the amount of time a customer waits in queue by 25 percent using the Virtual Contact Center solution with VoIP from Nortel

With US$5.2 billion in annual sales in 2005 and operations across 27 countries, Timken has nine contact centers in North America but the company previously had no way to unify its contact centers to have them work as one team. Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center solution now allows Timken’s agents to interact as if they were co-located to present one face to the company.

Timken customers access a flexible contact center that quickly routes their calls through menu choices to the most appropriate agent. Since the call is not limited to the resources or time constraints of a specific location as it once was, wait times for Timken customers are significantly reduced. There has been a 25 percent to 40 percent improvement in customer responsiveness, without having to increase staff.

Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center solution also improves agent productivity and reduces costs by distributing customer calls across sites according to resource availability, demand, and skill set.

Prior to implementing Nortel technology, our call centers could not quickly and efficiently share resources or skill sets across our call center sites," said Rick Mowery, Timken section manager for Network Design and Engineering.

Real-time displays help keep agents from being surprised by a queue that is backing up because they can see it in real-time, giving us a great grasp of who we’re getting calls from and how many calls are in the queue," Mowery said. "With on-demand reports that can be customized based on the information needed, managers can quickly identify trouble spots and re-route calls in a matter of minutes if necessary.

Timken also has a stronger grasp on call volume and can better serve their customers by ensuring lower wait times.

Timken managers are also benefiting from Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center because it saves them time from dealing with repetitive and redundant tasks such as manually consolidating metrics from various locations. Reports are generated automatically and reflect information gathered from all the contact centers.

"With its products ranging from use in elevators at the Eiffel Tower, to the Mars Rover, and to Air Force One, it is essential for Timken to ensure timely, reliable support for its customers," said Dave Murashige, general manager, Multimedia Applications, Nortel. "The Nortel Contact Center technology brings Timken a more versatile environment so they can tap into their best resources based on availability, demand, and skill set to offer industry-leading customer service."

Timken is also using Nortel’s Remote Gateway 9150 and Nortel Remote Gateway 9115 to support IP telephony (VoIP) services for all their branch offices. This makes it feasible for some of their workers to telecommute and connect securely to the virtual contact center network from their home offices.

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