Rollout under duress Operational gains Claims processing, New York-style What is the User Excellence Award? 2003 User Excellence Award winner 2003 User Excellence honorable mentions

One of the first calls employees injured on the job make is to the state workers' compensation board to initiate benefits claims for coverage of medical bills and replacement of lost wages. But New York workers making that call before 2001 were likely to suffer insult on top of injury: Customer service was abysmal.

Even though the New York State Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) had digitized all its paper files, customer service was a mess. Each office had its own setup - some a few dedicated lines, others a Centrex system, still others gear from Lucent or Nortel. No more than three customer service representatives staffed each office, regardless of incoming call volume. In some offices, call volume was light and reps didn't have enough to do. In others, calls streamed in nonstop. "A significant number of calls got busy signals, and callers faced long wait times," says John McDermott, IS director for the WCB. The board receives approximately 1 million calls per year from injured workers and other stakeholders in the workers' compensation system.

Virtual call center technology, still nascent in 2000 when the WCB began investigating fixes for its customer service problem, seemed a viable option. The WCB's earlier decision to eliminate paper files turned out to be a boon. "If our case files hadn't been computerized, we couldn't have [pursued a virtual call center]. This means everybody can look at all the case files, regardless of location," says Joanne Conrad, assistant director of claims operations at WCB, noting that all claim-related documents, including medical forms and letters, are scanned into an electronic folder.

The WCB found the virtual call center idea attractive compared with the more traditional approach of building a centralized call center, which would have required construction funding and relocating or laying off dozens of reps, then hiring and training new reps in the area. A virtual call center, on the other hand, would let the WCB tie its district and satellite offices into a centralized phone system and let its existing staff of reps work as a single unit. They would take calls based on availability and appropriate skills, not geographic location, thereby evenly distributing call volume and allowing more consistent customer service. And the cost, at approximately $900,000 for hardware, software and consulting services, would be significantly less than a project involving new construction.