Pharmacists Mutual To Implement Interactive Intelligence's Customer Interaction Center

Pharmacists Mutual (Algona,Iowa) has selected Interactive Intelligence's (ININ, Indianapolis) Customer Interaction Center IP communications software suite to support the carrier's on-site and branch office employees, according to an ININ news release.

Pharmacists Mutual reevaluated its communications capabilities in the wake of the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, according to the ININ source. While considering upgrading its existing systems, Pharmacists Mutual issued an RFP to which four vendors responded. The insurer encountered Customer Interaction Center through the vendor's reseller Spanlink Communications (Minneapolis), and chose the ININ solution over the alternative vendor products because of its flexibility, rich feature-set and ease-of-use, according to the Pharmacy Mutual's network administration manager, Brian Stamper.

"Our previous phone system was largely outdated, difficult to administer, and didn't meet our redundancy or flexibility needs," comments Stamper. "Administering it required logging in to a number of separate applications " we had one application for our automatic call distributor, one for voice, another for our phones, and so on."

"After we met with Spanlink and reviewed the Interactive Intelligence CIC system we were impressed by the amount of out-of-the-box functionality it offered," adds Stamper. "In addition to running on a single, all-in-one platform, a fully redundant CIC system was a more cost-effective purchase than several of the competitive products we evaluated."

When the implementation is complete, the Interactive Intelligence software suite will support several hundred Pharmacists Mutual employees, about 15 percent of whom work remotely from branch offices. Spanlink will provide ongoing support of the system. The initial deployment will enable advanced communications functionality, including unified messaging, multichannel recording, and real-time monitoring and reporting, according to the ININ source.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio