Pronexus, the developer of the leading Interactive Voice Response (IVR) toolkit Pronexus VBVoice™, announced today that the E. W. Scripps Company, a media company operating 14 newspapers throughout the United States, will standardize on a VBVoice-based subscription system which handles complaints, vacations stops and restarts, delivery confirmations as well as payments.
Efficiency Important in the Newspaper Business
Scripp’s VBVoice implementation started in one Florida-based newspaper in 2002. “Our old system was inflexible and expensive,” describes Dr. Ed Lindoo, Senior Director of IT Infrastructure for Scripps. After a systems integrator built a new subscription system based on VBVoice, Scripps took over the maintenance and further development of it.
Scripps’s IVR’s usage rate is 57—59% while the old system operated at 32—35%. Recently, other Scripps newspapers have adopted Dr. Lindoo’s IVR thanks to its affordability and effectiveness. By the time the 18-month standardization project is over, the VBVoice-based system is estimated to be handling up to 10,000 calls a day for all the Scripps newspapers. VBVoice has been hugely successful for the sites that use it and Dr. Lindoo expects similar savings for the rest of the group: “The new IVR will save us upwards of $1.5 million per year”. “In a fiercely competitive market like the newspaper industry, VBVoice can help deliver superior customer service while keeping the costs down,” says Jordan Sommerville, Territory Sales Manager for Pronexus.
Technically-advanced Solution
Scripps’ VBVoice-powered touch-tone IVR covers three time zones and plays different greetings based on the local time, taking advantage of multithreading. Over the years, Dr. Lindoo has changed the system several times in response to changes in other systems and in Scripps’ IT infrastructure. “One of the things that I like about VBVoice is its flexibility. Making changes is fast and we get terrific support from Pronexus,” says Dr. Lindoo.

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