The Henredon Furniture Company (Morganton, NC) had seven customer-service representatives, each struggling to handle 150 dealer inquiries a day about stock availability. The volume of calls meant that many callers were getting busy signals. Others were put on hold for extended periods. West Coast dealers were especially upset because customer service ran on East Coast hours, which made late-afternoon and weekend inquiries virtually impossible.
To help spread the load, Henredon used Ease from Expert Systems (Atlanta, GA) to implement an interactive voice-response inquiry system. This enabled dealers to find out about such things as case goods, fabrics, upholstery frames, product availability, order status,
and other sales data.
The voice-response system handles 480 calls per day and generates 11,000 transactions. The high availability of the system is another major benefit. Since installing the system, Henredon has added fax-response capability so that dealers receive a hard copy of order status and inventory information.
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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Sitting Pretty
