RENTON, Wash. - Keeping pace with the rapidly growing online travel industry, last fall, Uniglobe.com Inc., an online travel booking agency, relaunched itself as a Web-enabled contact center with the help of Lucent technology. Now that customers have a choice of how they book their next trip-by phone or online-the company is experiencing growing success.

To keep its call center running smoothly, the Seattle-based agency integrated Lucent telephones with Lucent’s Web-enabled call center product, CentreVu Internet Solutions, to support email and live chat capabilities.

Uniglobe.com provides products and services to leisure and business travelers via its Website, www.uniglobe.com. The company also operates a fulfillment center for home-based travel agents and online companies. Founded in 1995, the company went public in Canada in October 1996.

Located in its 23,000-square-foot Renton, Wash. office, Uniglobe.com’s online division operates a call center that handles its cruise business, including sales and service calls. There, Travel Central Services, a third party provider, supports the online division with call center solutions. The 24/7 rescue line provides after-hours call center services and services to all Uniglobe.com customers’ air, hotel and rental car needs. Together the two operations staff just over 100 employees.
“Little by little, the Internet is becoming a community of large and small travel companies,” says Michael Dauberman, senior vice president of business development for Uniglobe.com. “We are still the little guy-still 23,000-square-feet-but we are a lot bigger than most.” He says every few months the company doubles its workforce to meet growth.

Before upgrading, customers contacted Uniglobe.com’s call center by phone, flat email and form-generated email. Siemens technology allowed auto-response and sorting capabilities.

“The goal at that time was to answer all of the emails within 24 hours,” says Dauberman.

Since the implementation of the Lucent telephones and CenterVu technology, “our goal went from emails in 24 hours to 20 minutes,” he says.

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