In the debt-collection business, timing is everything. “We have prime-time dialing hours,” explains Richard S. Daniels Jr. Esq., President of Daniels Law Offices PC, “and we run calling campaigns at key times during the day. Our biggest challenge in this business is getting a hold of the right contact.”

Some 10 years ago, the firm invested in a Mitel® SX-200® phone system.

“We couldn’t do business the way we do without this kind of system,” Daniels asserts. “Past phone systems were simply inadequate to handle our call volumes. The volume of calls we’re able to handle with the Mitel solution is infinitely greater than when we had the old single-line analog phone solution.”

Daniels recently decided to upgrade that system and reap the advantages of IP-based teleworking. He explains, “Our ISDN-based remote lines were down more than they were up.”

Exploiting IP for 24/7 Availability

“The officers of this law office need to be able to work 24/7,” Daniels says. It’s all part of running a time-critical business. “We knew we needed to upgrade our remote lines, and will soon need to upgrade to a larger system, so we started looking at our options.”

Daniels considered various alternatives, ultimately taking advantage of Mitel intelligent upgrade path and adding an IP Node to the SX-200. The node and the Teleworker Solution connect remote phones to the corporate phone system seamlessly over IP, avoiding costly toll charges and enabling phone connectivity from anywhere over the Internet.

Employees with the teleworker sets simply plug the phone into DSL connections at home or anywhere that a broadband (cable, DSL, satellite) connection exists, and are instantly connected to the corporate phone system. “When I get on the system at home,” Daniels relates, “it’s just like being in my office. And for incoming calls it’s the same – they just forward on to this phone and the caller can’t tell where I’m located.”

It’s just as easy to connect from other locations. “Next month, we’ll be away for 11 days at back-to-back conferences,” Daniels says. “We’ll take the sets with us and get so much more accomplished in our hotel rooms.We’ll be able to pick up voice mail or answer our calls directly from the hotel room. It’s fabulous.”

Ready for Growth

Keeping key personnel and officers of the company in touch is more and more critical as the firm grows. “When we grow, we really grow,” Daniels explains. “When we add a client, it’s a client that brings us 500 - 1,000 cases a month, so our potential for growth is big and it happens quickly.”

He plans for IP to remain a core part of his company’s growth strategy.

“The upgrade to IP was amazingly simple.We didn’t have a minute of downtime.We’ll be able to grow into a bigger Mitel systems just as easily, and for us that’s a blessing.”

The IP-based solution has enabled the firm to reap the benefits of new applications. Automated call distribution (ACD) and direct-in dial (DID), for example, have relieved the previously overwhelmed receptionist while helping clients get in touch with the right person or department directly. With caller ID, collection agents can validate the identity and numbers of debtors and even learn their habits by identifying where they call from and at what times. New silent monitoring capabilities help Daniels and others train agents and monitor the quality of service.

Daniels also took the opportunity of the upgrade to IP to integrate a Predict Ability Plus predictive dialer into the Mitel solution. “The integration into the Mitel solution was very good,” Daniels says, “and it’s increased the productivity of our collection agents by six to eight times.

“We were first attracted to IP because of cost,” he admits. In fact, the upgrade is saving Daniels $2,400 per year by eliminating old ISDN lines. “But choosing a Mitel IP-based solution has given us many additional application benefits and control over our remote service. It’s a rock-solid system with tremendous flexibility at a low cost.”