CB&S Bank

Founded in 1906, CB&S Bank — then called Citizens Bank — was the only bank in Russellville, AL, to remain solvent throughout the Great Depression. Since then, CB&S Bank has become one of the largest community banks in the state of Alabama, with approximately $1.5 billion in assets and over three hundred employees at 40 locations in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

“It was just too much of a challenge to try and get all of the older systems to work together.”
- Jeremy Scott, IT Manager, CB&S Bank.

In early 2005, CB&S Bank had a patchwork of incompatible PBX phone systems throughout its offices. These disparate systems did not work well together and the overall solution was difficult to scale. In addition to needing a unified phone system, the bank wanted a centralized call center. With plans to add new branches regularly, the bank decided it was time to look at a solution that would offer simplicity of management and provide centralized call center capabilities.

“We started to look at IP because of its ability to provide a centralized call center and the scalability and ease of integration aspects of it.”
- Jeremy Scott, IT Manager, CB&S Bank.

With a priority list topped by call center capabilities, ease of use and management, failover capabilities, and feature richness, CB&S Bank set out to find a new business communications system, ultimately choosing ShoreTel. With the help of its integration partner, Tampa-based DataComm Networks, Inc., ShoreTel deployed ShoreTel 40, 60, and 120 Voice Switches, as well as several ShoreTel T1s. Over 522 ShoreTel IP Phones were installed in CB&S’ branch offices. ShoreTel Converged Conferencing provided the bank with rich conferencing and collaboration features, while N+1 redundancy enabled the bank to achieve high availability at an affordable rate and implement an important disaster recovery plan. Other benefits include:

• ShoreTel’s workgroups capability enables the consolidation of customer calls to one number by routing calls to the next available agent. Basic reporting capabilities help the bank direct its resources in response to demand.
• ShoreTel replaces expensive, third-party, pay-per-minute audio and Web conferencing costs with an easy-to-manage desktop solution. Integrated recording capabilities allow users to keep a record of presentations.
• ShoreTel’s least-cost routing capabilities also allow the bank to minimize costs by avoiding toll charges.
  The system’s built-in suite of versatile, real-time tools, including telephony control, instant messaging (IM), and collaboration services, allows employees to spend more time serving customers.

“Not only was the ShoreTel system more cost-effective than the rest, it offered us the ease of use and intuitiveness that we were hoping to find. ShoreTel also offered more standard features than the other vendors, and proved to be more reliable.”
-Jeremy Scott, IT Manager, CB&S Bank.