U.S. Bureau of Census, "Telephone Questionnaire Assistance (TQA) Program"
In December 1998, IBSI was awarded a subcontract by EDS to provide customer service support on the Census 2000 Telephone Questionnaire Assistance Program. IBSI was a partner with 15 other leading customer service firms, led by EDS, on this high profile Bureau of Census, U.S. Department of Commerce Project. This was the largest private voice and data network ever created. The project was based on Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), using Cisco’s (formerly GeoTel) Intelligent Call Router (ICR) to route calls into 15 call centers across the United States. IBSI was the sole firm chosen to provide inbound telephone support in five languages, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Tagalog, and English. In addition, IBSI had staffed representatives to answer calls in Kashmiri, Urdu, Somali, Arabic, Spanish, Bengali, and Punjabi.

IBSI hired and trained over 350 Customer Service Representatives and was staffed to answer over 300,000 calls per month for an 18-hours/7 days operation in our call center. The duration of the project was from August 1999 to May 2000; the majority of the work was done from January 2000 to April 2000.

U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service, "Ask Immigration Hotline"
In February 1996, IBSI was awarded an innovative contract from the Immigration & Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice. This was a high profile public-private partnership whereby the INS outsourced a pilot customer service call center project to IBSI. We hired and trained over 50 customer service professionals to answer inquiries from the public regarding green cards, citizenship and other immigration issues in English and Spanish.

This project was initially for one year, however, due to the success of the project, the INS extended the contract for two six-month periods and sought to expand the operation to a nationwide call center. IBSI successfully provided quality customer service to over 3 million callers during this project and increased efficiency by over 400%.

Reference Letter from the former Deputy Commissioner of the INS during the project.

Please accept my personal congratulations for your extraordinarily successful efforts on behalf of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Establishing, designing, managing and expanding INS' 1-800 Telephone Support Operations (TSO) has been a credit to IBSI, to INS and to the Federal government. It came to embody the very best of the Nation Performance Review's customer service initiatives. As the former Deputy Commissioner of the INS, I was proud to have been associated with IBSI in this program.

In 1996, when IBSI started preparing to augment the incoming call answering service, INS estimated that it was losing over half of the calls place to its offices. Callers were waiting up to 10 minutes to access the Interactive Voice Response system and up to 1.5 hours to reach a customer service representative. There were 62 telephone numbers to call for INS information, the callers paid the long distance charges while they waited on the line, the service was provided only in the English language and the automatic messages lasted for 9 minutes.

Between February and June of 1996, IBSI designed, developed and equipped the TSO. As a part of this effort 60 candidates were selected out of a pool of 400 and received security clearances and training. The automated voice message system was redesigned reducing the time, order, and number of options. A call tracking system was developed and the office space was obtained, furnished, and equipped. In June of 1996 the fully operational bi-lingual (Spanish/English) call center opened.

Within 8 months, IBSI had taken over the calls being received from 22 cities across the United States. The abandoned call rate was down dramatically. The customer service representatives were operating a 400% productivity level compared to their counterparts in other INS offices, and compliments were being received daily from satisfied callers.

The success of this project led to a full nationwide implementation. Your effort was what made that success possible. Congratulations and thank you for a job well done.

Sincerely,
Chris Sale
Chief Operating Officer