MJ Insurance, among the 100 largest privately-held insurance agencies in the U.S., has reported increased employee productivity and improved customer service as a result of deploying the Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) enterprise IP telephony software suite, Customer Interaction Center (CIC).

“CIC’s unified messaging has given our business users access to voice mail and email from a single inbox, which has reduced the amount of time they spend chasing down and responding to messages,” said Donna Bender, director of operations for MJ Insurance, in a release. “Adding to this increased productivity is the fact that CIC gives employees unified messaging access from a mobile device or a web browser so they are equally productive from the road – something our sales force has really benefitted from.”

CIC’s presence management feature has enabled employees to improve customer service efforts.

“By giving employees visibility into the presence or status of others – such as ‘on the phone,’ ‘at lunch,’ or ‘on vacation’ – we can more effectively route customer and partner calls for better service,” Bender said.

Upon realizing that Siemens would no longer support replacement parts, MJ Insurance replaced its Siemens PBX (News - Alert) and Octel voice messaging system with CIC – purchased through Interactive Intelligence reseller, Communications Products Inc., who also managed the software deployment

“The trigger to replace our system was the end-of-life notice, but it proved ideal for taking advantage of new unified communications features, while tying our two offices together using a single-platform telephony solution,” said IT project manager for MJ Insurance, Kathy McDonald.

McDonald said the company selected CIC based on its architecture, features, and ease-of-use.

“We loved CIC’s unique single-platform architecture that ran a wide range of unified communications applications,” she said. “This simplified architecture meant faster deployment and easier management.”

CIC, which provides MJ Insurance employees functionality for IP PBX, unified messaging, voice mail, auto-attendant, conferencing, reporting, and a desktop client with presence management and corporate directory look-up, now supports all of the company’s employees.

“CIC has given us four-digit dialing between our two locations and we can now see who’s available at each office, which has enabled us to service customers faster and more effectively,” McDonald added. “CIC’s features, such as conferencing, are also much simpler to use than our old system.”

Interactive Intelligence is a Platinum sponsor of ITEXPO West 2011. To be held Sept. 13-15 in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Brad Forsythe, Technical Sales Support at Interactive Intelligence, is speaking during “The Cloud Evolution in Contact Centers“, “UC in the Cloud: Understanding the Benefits and Challenges“ and “The Contact Center: The Key to Social Media Success.” Tim Wittbrod, Technical Sales Support at Interactive Intelligence, is speaking during “The Role of Unified Communications in Social Work Patterns.” Don’t wait. Register now.