Hertz Rent A Car relies on automated Switchboards by Clarity

To reduce the switchboard costs, the car rental agency Hertz uses the Clarity Contact Manager / The Clarity Contact Manager is a virtual, voice-operated switchboard which largely automates the dial switching at Hertz / Due to the Contact Manager, the availability of the staff by phone is improved / For internal use, telephone lists and extension numbers are mostly superfluous / Furthermore, the voice portal was integrated into a self-check-in for visitors

The switchboard often is the bottleneck of Customer communication. When the volume of calls is high, switchboards are quickly working to full capacity, which results in annoying waiting loops. This is a situation which also the car rental company Hertz was confronted with. During peak hours, the switchboard of the German headquarters in Eschborn quickly was at its capacity limits. Up to now, the dial switching belonged to the duties of the staff at the reception desk. “In order to increase the efficiency of our switchboard, Hertz decided to implement the Clarity Contact Manager, an automated voice portal“, explains Ullrich Krautstrunk, Director IT & Operations Support at Hertz.

 

The speech dialogue software of Clarity can answer eight calls at the same time. Callers simply name the desired contact person or a department and the speech recognition tool arranges for the automatic switching of the call. “Only in very exceptional cases our staff has to switch the calls manually“, Ullrich Krautstrunk explains. This happens only if the caller desires a manual switching or if the speech recognition tool for once does not understand the information of the caller.  By the Contact Manager, Hertz can also resort to the departments’ secretaries for the call reception. “All in all, we could largely automate the tasks of the switchboards and thus save costs. The return on investment could be reached within only a few months“, Ullrich Krautstrunk emphasizes.

 

Not only the cost advantages convinced Hertz of the Clarity solution. “Thanks to the Contact Manager, the availability of the staff could be improved”, explains Dr. Stella Malsy, Human Resources Development Manager at Hertz. The automated switchboard is now available twenty-four-seven. Thanks to the follow-me function, the Contact Manager switches the call automatically to another preset number if the callee is not in his office,  for example to the mobile phone. Alternatively, the call can also be switched to a colleague in charge or to the mailbox. All parameters like responsibilities, times of presence and absence, mobile phone numbers and proxy regulations can be filled in the system. And any employee can carry out the individual settings comfortably by a web-interface.

 

Furthermore, the Contact Manager also helps in internal use. The Hertz staff members do not have to remember extension numbers any more or look them up before calling another colleague. They simply have to give the name, and the Clarity Contact Manager connects them with the desired contact person. Furthermore, the voice portal was integrated into a self-check-in for visitors. Visitors of the headquarters quickly check in themselves at a computer terminal. After a successful registration they have the Contact Manager connect them with their host of Hertz, who picks them up in the reception area.

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Hertz is the world’s largest and longest established vehicle rental company. The company was founded in 1918 in Chicago and operates more than 7,900 locations in over 150 countries - of which more than 300 are in Germany.  Hertz offers around the globe a fleet tailor-made to customers' needs - in Germany from economy cars to 40-tonner trucks.

Clarity AG is a leader in the production of prized telecommunication solutions for business and call centre telephony. Clarity’s products aim at improving telephony service and customer communication, notwithstanding a simultaneous reduction in operating costs. Key products are the Clarity Communication Center and the Clarity Business Edition, both of which are software-based communication systems whose functions cover a large spectrum ranging from the telephone device to the speech dialogue system. Clarity offers further products, such as the Clarity Contact Manager, which is a virtual telephone switchboard that allows the complete automation of telephony business processes.

Among Clarity AG’s customers are numerous Forbes 2000 corporations and many call and contact centres, which conduct millions of daily telephone connections with the aid of Clarity systems. Clarity’s headquarters are located in Bad Homburg in the vicinity of Frankfurt am Main, and the company is present in other German, Austrian and Swiss locations. Furthermore, it is also represented in Eastern Europe and Asia, including India and China.

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