BACKGROUND
Greenhill is a coeducational private school with enrollment of more than 1,200 students, preschool through grade 12. The school seeks to provide exceptional opportunities for academic achievement, intellectual growth, artistic fulfillment, physical development, moral awareness and community responsibility. Greenhill’s 78-acre campus is located in Addison, Texas.

THE CHALLENGE
Greenhill had long outgrown the traditional voice mail system that had been in use at the school for years. With the existing system, the school had a main number and each faculty member had his or her own extension. The school’s administrative staff, whose phones and voice mail were easily accessible in their offices, was well served by the voice mail system. However, according to Michael Kesner, director of computing resources at Greenhill, the teachers had no phones in their classrooms and therefore did not benefit from the convenience of voice mail.

Kesner explains that three years ago Greenhill began a school-wide technology effort intended, in part, to enhance the quality of time spent in the classroom. PCs were installed in every classroom and administrative office. Each PC was networked in a Microsoft® Windows environment and with the school’s own T1 connection to the Internet. Teachers and faculty alike benefited from and learned to rely on the convenience of communicating through Microsoft Outlook’s® email system.

“The new network was significantly improving communications in the entire school – especially giving the teachers a way to receive and send messages at any time of day from their classrooms via their PCs,” said Kesner. “But the system was still inadequate. Teachers still had to go to a phone in a central location to wait in line with other teachers to check their voice mail. Some teachers would check their phone messages every chance they had – especially if expecting an important call – and possibly adding an element of stress and distraction to their day. Other teachers preferred checking messages at the start and close of each day – possibly keeping them from receiving important messages from parents or others during the day.”

Consequently, the school decided to look into the possibility of tying the system into its computer network and email system.

THE SOLUTION
Kesner and his team did their homework and thoroughly screened several unified messaging vendors and their products. “As we conducted our research for a new unified messaging solution, our first objective was to find a solution that would leverage the Microsoft Outlook interface already widely accepted and used by the faculty,” said Kesner.

After evaluating all options, Greenhill chose Mercury Communication Services to provide CallXpress® unified messaging from AVST. “CallXpress from AVST was exactly what we were looking for. AVST has been perfecting the CallXpress relationship with Microsoft Outlook. The products work well together and we feel it is an advantage that we are able to benefit from the upgrades and advances of both programs simultaneously.”

While the process of selecting their unified messaging solution was lengthy and time-consuming, the actual installation of CallXpress literally occurred overnight – with virtually no prior user training and no complications. “CallXpress was installed during one of the first weeks of December, while school was still in session,” said Kesner. “There wasn’t any time for training sessions due to the busy time of year, and we didn’t want to ask the teachers to stay another night after school for training. Consequently, teachers and faculty left the school on a Friday having used one system and returned on Monday to a new system and a new phone number all their own. Even without training, because people were used to Exchange already and comfortable with email, there was very little learning curve. It was an extremely successful, smooth transition.”

With CallXpress, all of Greenhill’s teachers and administrators also have the capability of remotely receiving and managing their messages from anywhere, by either dialing in to the school network via telephone or by accessing Outlook via the Web. “Our staff no longer has to go in to the school after hours to retrieve information they might need from a message in their inbox,” said Kesner. “They can access that information from their own homes. Additionally, when administrators travel off-site, or when teachers go to conferences, they don’t have to make two phone calls to get their messages – one to get email via the PC and another to check voice-mail via the phone – since the information is all in one place. Also, before implementing CallXpress, when everyone went away for the summer, no one knew what was going on at the school. Now, they can easily be connected with what’s going on here by being able to access their messages so conveniently from wherever they are.”

By taking advantage of Automated Agent, the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) component of CallXpress, Greenhill students and parents now have access to school information 24 hours a day, seven days a week via fax or phone. “By dialing the school’s main number and following the prompts, parents and students have access to school event schedules as well as a directory of our entire staff, including teachers and administrators,” said Terry Jones who works in Greenhill’s business office and also administers the phone system. “Callers can also request admissions packets without ever talking to an operator. If they wish to speak to someone in person, that option is also included in the menu.”

RESULTS
In the months since CallXpress was implemented, Greenhill has found that the unified messaging system has benefited its entire organization, from the administrators, to the teachers and, indirectly, to the students. "With the ability to access voice, fax and email messages from their PC, our faculty has saved an incredible amount of time, not to mention that we no longer have Post-It notes all over the place!” said Kesner.

According to Kesner, members of the administrative staff, who typically receive more messages than teachers, are now able to manage their messages with much more ease and efficiency. CallXpress enables voice and fax messages to be filed and organized exactly like email messages. This allows Greenhill’s faculty and staff to easily organize and save all their messages to be accessed at a later point in time.

Teachers, who will never have a phone in the classroom and never receive their phone calls directly, also benefit from CallXpress. “Teachers can now receive all their messages at their convenience through their PC in the classroom,” said Kesner. “As a result, they are able to receive important messages, such as a call from a parent regarding a sick child, in a more timely manner and are also able to have more time and energy to focus on the kids.”

CallXpress also has significantly increased the convenience of sending and receiving faxes for the Greenhill staff. “Before CallXpress, we only had one fax machine on campus in one of the buildings,” said Kesner. “A person expecting an important or private fax had to go stand by the machine and wait for it to come. Otherwise the fax would appear in the person’s mailbox in a couple days, or maybe a week – if someone else had accidentally picked up extra pages with their fax. Now, our staff is realizing the convenience of being able to send and receive faxes electronically at their PC.”

Not only does CallXpress keep Greenhill’s students and parents more informed, it also saves Greenhill staff members an immense amount of time, because they do not have to personally handle every call that comes into the main line. Callers choose from a menu of options and are easily routed to their desired destination.

According to Kesner, while it is difficult to make an exact calculation as to Greenhill’s return on investment in CallXpress, the return is no doubt there. “In addition to making our staff more productive, CallXpress is an investment in our product – which is the quality of the classroom time teachers spend with their students,” said Kesner.

“Knowing that all our voice, fax and email messages are delivered both confidentially and efficiently has brought us all peace of mind. We are ecstatic about CallXpress!”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
For 25 years, AVST has been shaping the evolution of communication, with more than 40,000 installations. Our award-winning CallXpress solution has been unifying communications for companies all over the world. So as the world of enterprise communications advances, you can be assured that AVST has your future covered. To learn more visit www.avst.com or contact us at +1.949.699.2300.