Aspect Software?s Contact Center Solutions Just What Cabela?s Ordered

Aspect Software, Inc., the world’s largest company solely focused on the contact center, announced today that Cabela’s, the World’s Foremost Outfitter® of hunting, fishing and outdoor gear, is generating revenue, reducing customer wait times and increasing employee productivity in its contact centers with the aid of Aspect Software’s customer service solutions.

“Part of our strategy is that every customer calling Cabela’s receives personal service from a live agent. We don’t want our customers to experience long wait times, so we have to have the appropriate number of agents on hand at any given moment to handle the call volume, which can fluctuate dramatically due to seasonal marketing campaigns and catalog drops,” said Ron Spath, vice president of customer relations, Cabela’s.

Catalog sales are a major source of income for Cabela’s, which circulated more than 120 million catalogs with over 76 separate titles and reported a record $1.80 billion in revenue in fiscal 2005. The contact centers that process product orders are vital to the company’s success. Aspect Software’s solutions have enabled Cabela’s 1,500 agents to handle large call volumes more efficiently, while maintaining higher service levels.

“With Aspect’s contact center technology,” Spath continued. “Cabela’s can route calls according to our agents’ skill sets, simultaneously queue calls across our five sites, provide easy access for our agents to customer history stored in our databases, determine staffing requirements in advance and make real-time adjustments. These capabilities have helped our agents consistently answer more than 80 percent of calls received within 20 seconds?despite the very dynamic nature of our environment.”

The competitive advantage Cabela’s has gained by powering its contact centers with Aspect Software technology is also enhanced by the overall ease of managing the system, which has reduced downtime significantly. Uptime is crucial for Cabela’s since the majority of its sales are from callers dialing a single phone number to place orders. The flexibility and reliability of the Aspect Software solution lets Cabela’s make any necessary system updates easily while maintaining efficient operations. More uptime means a better customer experience.

“Aspect Software understands that customer service is a core value for Cabela’s. Its contact centers are not cost centers but revenue-generating powerhouses that need technology infrastructure supportive of consistently optimal performance,” said Ralph Breslauer, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Aspect Software. “This retailer has grown to become one of the most well-known outdoor recreation brands in the United States because of its attention to product quality and customer service. Aspect Software is proud to support its winning strategy.”

The Aspect® CallCenter® ACD, from the Aspect Signature product line, is a call-handling system that has the ability to process as many as 200,000 inbound and outbound calls per hour, routes calls according to agent skill sets, simultaneously queues calls across multiple sites and provides tools for reporting real-time and historical data.

The Aspect® Enterprise Contact Server™, from the Aspect Signature product line, provides advanced routing for the multi-site, multi-channel contact center. Although Cabela’s has yet to take advantage of all its functionality, the software makes it possible to blend voice, VoIP, e-mail and interactive Web contacts into a single, centrally managed universal queue, apply the same business rules to all contact channels, deliver CTI screen pop with e-mail and interactive Web contacts, as well as with voice calls, and operate multiple sites as a single virtual contact center.

Aspect® eWorkforce Management™, from the Aspect Performance Optimization product line, creates detailed agent work schedules based on call volume forecasts, shift templates and employee preferences; assigns these schedules to agents, taking their skills, experience, work preferences and other business-determined criteria into consideration; records exceptions as they become known; and continually tracks performance.