Case Study: Carlson Wagonlit Travel achieves $180,000 in telecom savings and boosts contact center efficiency with Mitel

Corporate Travel Provider Maximizes Efficiency with Integration of Virtual Contact Center

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), a global leader in business travel management with about 300 employees in Canada, faced rising labor and telecom costs while aiming to standardize phone systems, improve call handling and customer experience, and support a growing number of small office/home office (SOHO) consultants. With labor representing over half of costs and typical SOHO line charges high, CWT needed a cost-effective, customizable way to link distributed consultants and maintain service levels.

CWT migrated to a Mitel VoIP platform (Teleworker, 3300 ICP and contact-center solutions), connecting home-based consultants to the main system over a single Internet link and consolidating trunk lines with a PRI. The change delivered roughly US$180,000 in phone-line savings over three years, eliminated US$1,000/month in local long-distance fees, cut maintenance by US$72,000/year, enabled branch consolidation, improved first-call live-answer rates (85% target met/exceeded), and boosted training, workload consistency and customer satisfaction.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel

Sherry Saunders

VP of Corporate Operations