Case Study: LTD Financial Services

LTD Financial Services handles 2.5 million calls per month and stands ready for future growth with Castel Connects®.

Castel delivers the dialing capabilities and support LTD needs to differentiate their services in competitive markets.

When purchasing a predictive dialer, technology, of course, is key. But a purchase decision that does not also factor in the vendor’s support and service record, as well as their history of innovation, is likely to disappoint. LTD Financial Services, LP, a private collection agency with 700 employees distributed across call centers in Houston and San Antonio, discovered the truth of this statement several years ago when their dialer could not transition smoothly to Y2K and their vendor did little to help.

“The whole Y2K experience showed us that adaptability of both the vendor and their products to changing technologies and business conditions is an essential decision factor,” says Lenny Pruzansky, LTD’s chairman and CEO. “That’s the reason we selected a Castel predictive dialer in 1999, it’s the reason we recently upgraded to Castel Connects, and it underlies our conviction to stay with Castel long into the future.

"Their technology works and works well, but equally important is the fact that so does our relationship. Whenever we have any questions about how to optimize the use of the dialer to meet our requirements, Castel’s support organization offers fast and actionable responses. And, as the recent release of Castel Connects proves, they continually upgrade their solution with the features that we need to maintain a competitive position in the marketplace.”

Castel Services

David John, LTD’s vice president of operations concurs: “I believe there may be other dialers that offer some of the new features Castel Connects offers,” he says. “But I don’t believe that there is any dialer vendor in the marketplace that would react as quickly when I call with an issue. In so far as support is concerned, Castel ranks with the top vendors I’ve ever dealt with. When you deal with a bill collector who’s a skeptic, it’s tough to get that kind of rating. But Castel does.”

LTD also appreciates the service they receive from Castel when they need assistance in meeting tailored reporting requirements. As an example, John cites a specific management report. “With 400 agents in one of our call centers and 300 in the other, management can be difficult,” John says. “So to get a handle on things we try to focus on critical management parameters such as the length of time it takes agents tosummarize comments before making themselves available for the next call. Castel showed us how to generate a report that provides this specific cut of data, and now we can target training programs for those agents we feel could be more productive.”

Castel Connects Streamlines

But its not just service that Castel delivers to LTD. The latest version of Castel Connects, which LTD recently implemented, also offers several new features that streamline operations and enable even greater competitive differentiation. For example, with its new remote management support feature, Castel Connects lets LTD centrally manage the switching elements of both of their dialers. This not only eliminates the need for onsite technical support in both Houston and San Antonio sites, but also enables faster response by IT staff when maintenance is required. “Should emergency maintenance procedures be required,” John says, “any required actions can be completed from any Web-enabled PC. Remote management also facilitates our ability to complete a fast fail-over from one center to the other in the event of a physical disaster at either site.”

LTD is also benefiting from the answering machine detect feature in the latest version of Castel Connects. “By relying on the dialer to determine when a call is answered by a machine, we can disconnect that call before routing it to an agent and thereby boost agent productivity,” John says. “This feature also lets us automatically schedule these numbers for recalls throughout the day so we can meet the list penetration rates our clients require.” Alternatively, for some clients, LTD takes advantage of their dialer’s ability to leave automated messages on answering machines. This feature, called Intelligent Message Delivery (IMD), allows LTD to set multiple parameters that govern which prerecorded messages are delivered, and when. So, for example, in certain campaigns, message A may be played to an answering machine, but message B is played when a person answers. IMD also enables message recipients to immediately connect to a live agent, IVR, or other resource after listening to the message. “About 30 to 40 percent of our clients are now using this automated messaging feature in some way,” John says, “so clearly it is a competitive tool for us.”

Castel Connects Works

For LTD, the benefits of the Castel dialer are simple, yet profound. As Pruzansky says: “Quite simply, the dialer just works. It does exactly what we need it do. And should a situation ever arise where we have a dialing need that is beyond our understanding of Castel Connects capabilities, we are confident that Castel’s technical support staff will be ready to resolve any issues we may have.”

“With a call volume exceeding 2.5 million calls per month, and up to 64 campaigns being run  simultaneously,” he continues, “we just cannot afford to fool around with anything less than the best. Over the years Castel and their products have proven themselves to meet that high standard; they clearly share our vision of giving customers the best possible service at the best possible cost.”