Contact Islington Earns 2007 Summit Award at Consona Customer Conference

Company Uses CRM to Achieve Highest Percentage Rise in Customer Satisfaction in London; Wins Transformation Award

Orlando, Indianapolis and London, Oct. 23, 2007
Consona Corporation (Consona), a worldwide leader in providing customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and services for the enterprise, announced at its premier customer conference, Consona Connect, that Contact Islington, the Centrix supplied, innovative, award-winning 24X7 service center within a London borough, is the 2007 recipient of the software provider’s Transformation Award.
The Transformation Award, part of Consona’s annual Summit Awards, honors a customer that has been able to either reinvent its business or achieve a strong return on investment in a relatively short period of time. Recipients of the award submit both qualitative and quantitative data that illustrate how the solution has impacted the customer’s business model or overall business performance. Award recipients display significant business improvements and changes, such as unprecedented customer satisfaction levels, the introduction of new products and services, or increased sales.
Over the past three years, Islington has received numerous industry accolades for posting remarkable contact center metrics, including resolving 80 percent of resident issues in one call and boasting “good” to “excellent” service ratings from well over 90 percent of its residents. With an average of 27,000 calls and 1,400 face-to-face meetings each week, only Liverpool and Birmingham councils experience higher rates of contact.

However, the success Islington enjoys today was not achieved overnight. The drive to improve services began six years ago at a time when Islington fared poorly in surveys of council services. In response, new council policies were established to ensure residents would see the council as a single organization under the banner of “One Islington.” Customer focus was declared a top priority and the transformation into a customer-focused organization began.

To support a state-of-the-art call center, Contact Islington began its implementation of Onyx CRM in 2003. The center opened on schedule later that year, and in March 2007, Contact Islington upgraded with the aim of improving its efficiency and effectiveness still further.

Overall, Onyx CRM has supported Contact Islington throughout its transformation to a 2006 Customer Service Contact Center of the Year, while enabling the authority to achieve benefits like the following:

• Significantly improved survey ratings and call resolution percentages within 18 months of the implementation—helping the centre achieve the highest percentage rise in customer satisfaction in London.

• The creation of a one-stop shop for citizen calls—80 percent of transactions are resolved with a single call.

• The funding of a 24/7 operation at no incremental growth in cost to the authority, thanks to savings generated by reduced handling costs (cost per transaction went from 263p to just 93p).

• The ability to easily add new, customer-centric features and services within 4 to 6 weeks.

• Improved overall understanding of customers’ needs and, as a result, better spending decisions and more efficiently allocated resources.

• The establishment of a robust and reliable operation—since implementing Onyx, no calls have been lost, and there have been no system outages.

• Dramatically reduced duplicate data entry and, as a result, operating costs.

“Onyx and Centrix have been instrumental in supporting our authority in both a cultural change revolution (changing the way we think about and deal with customers) and an organisational change revolution (how we organise departments around customer service),” said Kevin Gibbs, head of Contact Islington. “However, Onyx CRM has been critical to our technology change revolution, playing a key part in consolidating databases and creating interfaces between disparate systems to provide an unprecedented level of integration.”

“We are thrilled to honor Contact Islington with a Summit Award for some absolutely tremendous achievements," said Jeff Tognoni, CEO of Consona. "Contact Islington sets a standard for the commitment it takes to gain maximum return on a business system investment. The growth and success this company has achieved with our support reminds all of us at Consona why we're in business."

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About Consona Corporation
Consona Corporation (Consona, formerly known as M2M Holdings Inc.) is a worldwide leader in providing customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and services for the enterprise. Consona is dedicated to becoming a valued business partner by helping each and every customer continuously improve business processes over time. Toward this mission, Consona invests in the people, processes, technology and tools needed to provide its customers with a unique combination of customer care; product fit; a broad range of consulting, IT and business services; and industry expertise. Consona serves more than 4,500 customers worldwide and across a variety of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, financial services, health care, high tech, and local government. Battery Ventures and Thoma Cressey Bravo jointly own Consona. For further information, visit www.consona.com, e-mail info@consona.com, or call (888) 8 CONSONA.

About Centrix
Centrix is a leading reseller of converged voice, data and IP solutions to European businesses. The company partners with global companies, including Avaya, Braxtel, BT, Cable & Wireless, Cisco and Proxim, to design tailored communications systems for its customers, from relatively simple ISDN-based PBXs to fully converged voice, data and video networks involving VoIP, SIP, mobility, wireless and security.

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