Overview
AT&T Inc. is the world's largest telecommunications company, the largest provider of mobile telephone services, and the largest provider of fixed telephone services in the United States.
In 2012, AT&T contacted Q-nomy, via its systems integrator Amdocs, with a request to implement an advanced appointment scheduling solution for their stores. AT&T has been a Q-nomy customer ever since.
The Challenge
The unique challenges of the project resulted from the sheer size of the operation – around 2,300 AT&T stores that need their calendars supported and accessible online at all times. This scale of deployment necessitated:
- Highly efficient administration, requiring minimal manual intervention in everyday operation;
- Extreme stability and survivability;
- Very high performance, ensuring excellent customer experience and real-time updating of backbone calendar database even during peak usage;
- Same-day deployment of initial package and any future upgrades across all 2,300 stores.
The Solution
Q-nomy's project team implemented a solution based on the company's flagship software platform "Q-Flow®", which provided:
- A multi-channel scheduling system, enabling all modes of appointment booking: in-store or call center agent-operated, mobile / online self-service, etc.
- A full range of interfaces to AT&T administrative systems, enabling almost 100% automatic setup of stores, calendars, employee schedules and permissions, etc.
- Integration with AT&T proprietary greeter and store service management systems, ensuring a seamless experience for customers arriving for their appointments.
- High performance array of servers, tested to provide the required peak-hour workload with sufficient safety margins.
The most significant component of the solution is the online scheduling application developed by Q-nomy and embedded in the AT&T website:
Results & Benefits
Q-nomy's solution was highly successful, and attained its goals:
- Successful, same-day launch at 2,300 stores (following a brief, smaller-scale pilot that was equally successful).
- 100% stability in 8 years since launch.
- An effective customer experience, which has been shown to reduce repeat visits and increase customer satisfaction score.
- The online appointment scheduling solution was presented by Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T mobility, at the top of the list of customer service enhancements introduced by AT&T in 2013.
- The system contributed to AT&T's unprecedented improvement in customer satisfaction scores, rating highest in J. D. Power's purchase rankings and overall customer care satisfaction.
