Case Studies
Advantix Lending
Business Challenge
Advantix Lending was founded in 2004 in Irvine, California to serve as a premier lending institution. In the few years since its launch, Advantix has grown substantially. Today it has 115 employees and has built up teams to make outbound and inbound calls for loans for new home purchases, existing mortgage refinancing, and debt consolidation.
To operate successfully in the fast-paced, highly competitive loan industry, Advantix Lending’s vice president of information technology, Tony Lacson, is constantly seeking ways to make the company’s operations more efficient. In late 2005, he deployed a Cisco® Unified Contact Center Express solution to provide more efficient sales calls and customer service. He used custom distribution so that calls were pushed not to just the next available agent, but to the agent with the best knowledge set to handle the call. Next, he wanted to add an outbound dialing solution to the system that was very proactive, helping to keep outbound call representatives aggressive in their follow-up calls.
“The loan industry is extremely competitive, and we need to be constantly following up on every lead,” says Lacson. “It can be tough for our busy mortgage sales people to keep reaching out proactively to make their follow-up calls, but it is absolutely vital to our business. I wanted something more proactive than just a list of follow-up calls that need to be made.” He also wanted the solution to work transparently with the company’s Cisco Unified Contact Center Express system. In his search, Lacson found what he was looking for in a premier application provider called Radianta, and one of their leading products Campaign Express.
Network Solution
Cisco Silver Partner Metronome, also located in Irvine, recently spun out its award-winning Application Services Group and formed Radianta, an organization focused on the development and delivery of value-added applications that further leverage a company’s technology investment. In addition to custom application development, Radianta products are designed to help its clients increase revenue, manage operational cost, and provide business intelligence. Its premier product, Campaign Express, met Marx’s needs perfectly. And because it was designed specifically for Cisco CallManager and Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, it would maximize the return-on-investment in his Cisco solutions. By deploying Campaign Express on top of his Cisco Unified Contact Center Express system, Marx would have a powerful outbound dialing solution that would simplify campaign development, call routing, contact management, and reporting.
He contacted Radianta and found that Campaign Express could be deployed quickly and easily.
“Campaign Express was ready to use,” says Marx. “We were up and running in a couple of days.” With his penchant for squeezing efficiency and sales out of every process, Marx soon wanted even more power out of the outbound call lists.
“Our telemarketers work off a list of calls to be made,” he says. “I wanted the ability to do more than remind telemarketers that they needed to make a call.” That is when Jeff Fildey, Chief Technology Officer of Radianta, Inc., suggested a solution. By marrying its own in-house application, called Profit, with Campaign Express, Advantix Lending could increase the efficiency of its outbound calling campaigns. When Profit determines, via a schedule, that a certain call needs to be made, it immediately prompts the telemarketing agent. When agents indicate that they are available and ready to make the call, that call is then moved to the top of the calling queue and is automatically dialed. The system recognizes when the phone call has been answered by a person and quickly bridges the call over to the agent.
Business Results
“I like the Campaign Express and Profit solution because it pushes the agents to make those critical follow-up calls,” says Marx. “It can be tough to keep reaching out and making those calls, and some agents may sit back a bit because it is easier to wait for incoming calls. The increased phone activity creates energy on the floor that is vital to a dynamic sales environment.”
The Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Radianta solution is doing more than creating energy. It is increasing call volume, which is creating more loan applications, which in turn create more business for Advantix Lending.
“On the telemarketing side, we are making close to four times as many outgoing calls, and our overall loan origination has doubled,” says Marx. The success of the solution is prompting us to increase our available outbound ports, so we are expecting even more of an impact as soon as all ports are in and all of our sales people are on the system.”
Next Steps
But Marx, as is his nature, is already planning the next step. He wants to deploy the immediate callback feature among the company’s customer service staff. Increased activity with the customer service group will increase the number of completed applications for the company’s sales people. The application will then go to the loan processing department, where they will be prompted to make an introductory call and a follow-up call to rate the customer’s satisfaction in working with Advantix Lending.
“Leveraging Cisco Unified Contact Center Express with Radianta applications will have a high impact across our entire operation,” says Marx.
This kind of success is exactly what prompted Metronome to create Radianta.
“We really want people to do more with their infrastructure investment than they first conceived,” says Fildey. “When I see a company like Advantix Lending positively affecting their business by having a vision and finding the right solutions to leverage their infrastructure, it really validates the creation of Radianta.”
