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Wiggins Telephone Association finds efficiency through training
Over the last year, the staff at Wiggins Telephone Association learned that a small amount of training on MACC’s software can turn into a big boost in efficiency in their office. The company’s office manager, April Simmons, found that the relatively small expense of the training was some of the best money the company has ever spent.
Wiggins Telephone Association (WTA) is located 65 miles northeast of Denver, Colorado and serves more than 1,500 access lines. WTA has been using MACC’s Customer Master and Accounting Master for the past several years, but not using all of the programs’ features. While attending the 2008 MACC West Coast Users Group, Ms. Simmons learned more about what the WTA staff could learn with an on-site visit from one of MACC’s trainers. In July 2008, MACC’s Stacie Finken visited the company and instructed WTA’s Commercial Department employees on how to use many of Customer Master’s most powerful time-saving features.
“Stacie knows the software and its benefits so well,” Simmons said. “We loved having her here.”
Perhaps the most important knowledge that the commercial department staff learned from Finken was how to use Customer Master’s Disconnect Wizard. This handy tool streamlines the process of disconnecting a customer from a company’s network. While Simmons said the wizard certainly saves WTA staff time, it also ensures that the customer is charged the appropriate reconnect fee for WTA revenues.
Another feature of Customer Master that is now saving the company time is the Trouble Analysis Report. This report automatically tabulates all of the company’s trouble tickets for a time period defined by the user. Before learning how to use the report, Simmons said the report was compiled by hand. She said the report generated by Customer Master makes it much easier to identify trends in types and areas of trouble tickets being issued.
Finken also showed the WTA customer service staff how to use many of MACC’s new marketing reports. Over the last few years Customer Master’s account research and mail label report and churn report have been significantly improved. Simmons said the information these reports generate has been invaluable for the company’s marketing efforts.
With the success of MACC’s on-site training, WTA has begun to use the web training we make available on monthly basis. Using web training, MACC’s Mary Coufal has shown the company’s staff how to use several time-saving features in Accounting Master.
Simmons said one of the most beneficial things that she learned was how to utilize the direct payroll deposit feature.
“Using direct payroll deposit has really cut down on the time spent processing payroll,” she said. “We used to spend several hours every pay period on this task, but now it’s just a couple of hours every other week.”
WTA had been using Accounting Master’s Inventory Module. This feature of the program is designed to give companies an easy to use, yet comprehensive tool to manage the supplies and hardware they have in stock. Accounting Master software support has helped the staff solve issues and more effectively use the program. Simmons said the module has performed as advertised for WTA as it now much easier for the company to identify what material is available for use.
“MACC products are tools and before we didn’t have enough training,” she said. “We sought that training and MACC’s trainers helped us come up with some great ideas for our company. We’re much more efficient now.”
Besides taking advantage of the training that MACC offers, Simmons has recently began to use other services from MACC to improve the company’s efficiency. To track carrier access billing revenue, she started to use AccessMart, which is MACC’s web-based revenue assurance and reporting tool. She said she used to manually maintain a large spreadsheet with all of her CABS revenue information. Thanks to AccessMart, Simmons said she no longer needs the spreadsheet as reports that used to take days to create can now be handled in hours.
Another online service from MACC that WTA utilizes is eBill, our electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) system. Simmons said eBill’s biggest benefit is the way that payments are automatically transferred into Wiggins Telephone’s bank account. She said the service has really helped the company reduce the amount of time it spends entering customer payments.
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April Simmons, Office Manager
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