2005 C.I.P.A. Winners

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Nordia Inc.

Multimedia Relay System for the Hearing Impaired

Founded in 1999, Nordia Inc. is a leading Canadian provider of multi-contact customer relationship management solutions, and is part of an international contact-centre network. The company employs 2,000 people in seven contact centres in Quebec and Ontario. Nordia clients outsource, in whole or in part, their customer-service business in an environment adapted to their specific needs. Nordia also offers specialized programs such as directory assistance, relay services and teleconferencing for Canadian and US customers.

Challenge

Nordia won a relay-service contract from the State of California in 2002 to set up a call centre in Canada to handle interactions from people with hearing and speech impediments. At the time, however, it was impossible to meet the contract requirements for sophisticated relay services using existing technology.

More than 500 functions were identified in the contract specifications. The call centre needed to handle calls relayed from the US from callers using new technologies, including Internet-protocol and wireless technologies, as well as specialized technologies used by for the hearing impaired and speech disabled - and in several languages including English, Spanish and French.

The call centre had to ensure connectivity between the Canadian and US telecommunication systems, while making sure that original information would cross the border. Nordia also had to integrate its system with two other US-based providers of network services appointed by the client and compete with two other established relay service providers for the allocated percentage of the total call volume.

Objectives

Nordia set out to create an entirely new way to route and manage long-distance interactions, initiated on a wide variety of old and new platforms, into one efficient contact centre that would meet the needs of the hearing impaired and speech disabled.

Solution

Experts from Nordia and its strategic partners including Bell Canada, Nortel, Circumference Technology Services and Concept S2i developed and implemented a new technological platform integrating advanced call-management software. It is called the Multimedia Relay Centre. It offers a spectrum of new communication services for people who are hearing impaired and speech disabled. This system permits connection of relay services in several languages to US clients via specialized Nordia agents in Canada.

Pierre Grimard, vice president of information technology for Nordia, puts the work in perspective: "The creation of this new technological solution is unique and addresses quite a number of challenges. Our own expertise, combined with that of our partners, has enabled us to succeed in integrating communications using ASCII, TTY (keyboard telephones), voice or IP in one system, while at the same time establishing a connection between Canada and the US that permits relay-type calls to cross borders with all the necessary information."

Innovative Use of Technology

Nordia integrated Nortel contact-centre products with a newly developed application to handle the particular types of calls used by the hearing impaired and speech disabled, such as STS (speech-to-speech), ASCII, TTY, IP chat relay and IP video relay. By developing control tools to integrate voice and IP calls, Nordia succeeded in centralizing management of multiple call types on one single platform.

Nordia had to find a way to ensure a geographic transparence for the interactions it relayed. For every call received at the Nordia centre, there are often many outgoing calls that return to the U.S. These calls must contain the original information of the related incoming call so it can be displayed on the called party's telephone and for interstate toll billing purposes.

Typical relay services in most countries and in the US require an average response time of between 10 and 20 seconds and must convert the call processing to the modality selected, adding a few seconds to response time. Nordia's system permits the user to reach a relay service agent in less than 3.3 seconds on average in the modality regularly employed by the user. The integrated relay system directly supports 57 combinations of call types.

The system enables the hearing-impaired and speech-disabled user to simulate a person-to-person call (usually hearing and speech enabled) with the intervention of a relay service agent. Management of relay user preference profiles permits more efficient placement of calls to people frequently called by the user and quicker number dialing. IVR recording accelerates the process, giving time for the user to make his selections without having to call back several times. These two functions, along with several others, work to reduce the time needed to establish and manage the communication, thus reducing the number of agents while increasing capacity to handle a greater number of calls or interactions.

For being the only relay service provider among the three that successfully met the target implementation date of December 2, 2004, Nordia was allocated additional call volume. In 2005, Nordia added additional IP relay volume to its platform and contact centre with a new agreement with a US national IP relay provider.

A 2005 CIPA Winner!

For its exceptional application of information technology to solve real-world business problems and bring greater benefit to all its stakeholders, Nordia Inc. has been awarded a Gold Best of Category Award from the 2005 Canadian Information Productivity Awards in the Efficiency and Operational Improvements, For Profit category.

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