VoIP Phone System Making Waves
Growth-minded Schlitterbahn Waterparks puts AltiGen Communications solution to work

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As a highly independent, fast-growing owner of waterparks, Schlitterbahn Waterparks couldn’t afford to let antiquated, expensive phone systems get in the way of progress.

The largest waterpark in the United States was expanding into Galveston this spring, with plans to move into Kansas City in the near future. But the IT group at family-owned Schlitterbahn knew its existing phone system was nothing but a bunch of bad connections. Schlitterbahn was plagued with excessive maintenance costs for the proprietary system. Even making small changes meant waiting days for the vendor to show up. And what’s worse, Schlitterbahn’s reservation system, which was really starting to light up as expansion continued, sorely lacked all the call center capabilities a modern system requires.

Schlitterbahn is a company that designs and builds its own rides, and this do-it-ourselves spirit carried over to the search for a flexible, extensible, and affordable phone system. “We were stuck paying a humongous amount of money every year for a phone system that did very little for us,” recalls Leigh Murphy, director of information systems.

So Murphy teamed with Chris Reynolds, IT manager, and Stuart Blythin, the director of resorts in
charge of the call center, in search of the perfect phone solution. What they got is what Reynolds calls “a Swiss Army knife of a system.” Installed by San Antonio-based TelComTex Communications (www.telcomtex.net), the AltiGen phone solution has been “nothing short of spectacular,” say Reynolds and TelComTex owner Chuck Clark.

ROLLOUT SHORT, SWEET
After rolling out a pilot project of the AltiGen system at a manufacturing site, the Schlitterbahn team developed specifications for a companywide deployment.

“With little or no disruption to our ongoing operations, they installed the new system and rolled it out to 580 extensions at both our hotels and throughout the parks as well as at our corporate center—and they did it all in five days,” says Reynolds. “It worked beautifully right out of the box.”

For starters, Blythin’s reservation group became a bona fide call center overnight. With AltiGen, they are monitoring the calls with customers, and can produce reports on average wait times, calls abandoned, average times to service calls, and all the other features and functions of a super-efficient
call center. Blythin’s team also has far better tools for projecting peak calling loads in order to better
allocate staff and, more importantly, better serve customers.

Schlitterbahn now has a system that ties all the locations together over IP. Plus, the IT staff can add agents, move extensions, or add features easily— regardless of where they are working that day. With the vast majority of Schlitterbaum’s staff working in the field, the new system has been configured to receive voice mail over email, and to automatically ring mobile employees on cell phones and office phones at the same time.

And the anticipated ROI of the AltiGen system? “This will pay for itself in less than two years, and that’s not counting all the productivity and improved customer service we are gaining,” says Reynolds.