School Health

For more than half a century, Illinois-based School Health Corporation has been helping school nurses, athletic trainers, and other specialty healthcare providers ensure they have the proper supplies. From band-aids to vision-screening equipment, the privately held corporation supplies more than 7,000 general healthcare items to more than 60,000 schools across the United States.

“A key criteria for the new communications system was the ability to improve our call center.”
- Linda O’Brien, Director of IT, School Health.  

At the heart of the company’s success is its dedication to customer satisfaction. However, the company’s previous voicemail system on its outdated Avaya PBX was prone to frustrating outages, risking the delivery of important messages from customers. When the vendor announced it would no longer support the system, School Health decided it was time to look for a new system. Improved reporting and call routing capabilities were important to School Health, as well as vital tools to help organize and manage the call center and keep up with the growing customer base. 

“The ShoreTel Contact Center application had all the features we were looking for on a communications platform that is incredibly user-friendly. Plus, when we looked at the total cost of ownership of the ShoreTel UC system, the choice was obvious.”
- Linda O’Brien, Director of IT, School Health.  

Working with local reseller ATI, School Health installed a ShoreTel UC system comprising two ShoreTel Voice Switches, a voicemail server, and about 80 ShoreTel IP Phones — 40 for the call center and the rest in the remote offices and warehouse. ATI also trained School Health users, providing phones they could try in advance and cheat sheets to make the process quick and easy. The ShoreTel system was so easy to install that phones were placed on desks at 5 p.m. on a Friday evening, and within two and a half hours, the system was completely live. Other benefits include:

• With six supervisors and about 35 agents in the call center, School Health uses ShoreTel Contact Center for complete visibility into activities at the individual, group, and company levels.
• The ability to review call abandon rates helps School Health to measure its position in the marketplace and the satisfaction of customers, suppliers, and manufacturers.
• ShoreTel’s Workgroups application enables School Health to establish a separate division and queue for the sports health.
• The system, which looks and behaves like a single, unified platform, can be managed from anywhere on the network with the Web-based interface of ShoreTel Director; just one part-time employee can manage the entire system. 

“We’re confident that ShoreTel has given us a strong communications platform that will help fulfill our vision of improving operational processes and strengthening our ability to take advantage of new strategic opportunities going forward.”
- Linda O’Brien, Director of IT, School Health.