The Management Center

As a Service Provider, Pilgrim Telephone offers a comprehensive range of services, assuring the successful implementation of any campaign and minimizing the investment required by our partners.

Once a partnership is launched, Pilgrim initiates planning sessions to maximize integration of our partners' experience, expertise, and infrastructure with our own. Partners can depend on Pilgrim to support their marketing and implementation programs in the most reliable, secure, and high-performance means available today. Furthermore, with our expert staff and technologically sophisticated platform, Pilgrim can scale to meet almost any call volume need. Today, at our Management Center in Lexington, our Connections™ products handle millions of calls for our partners, ranging from mid-market players to the largest Local Exchange Carriers.

The Management Center houses the following resources:
• Engineering
• Customer Service Center
• Product Development & Marketing
• Billing, Collections, and Reporting

Pilgrim knows that implementing successful systems to manage high-volume telecommunications products usually requires considerable effort, expertise, and money. That's why our Connections™ offering includes a comprehensive handling of all administrative requirements utilizing customer software, efficient technology, and well-trained personnel.

Engineering

Pilgrim's engineering department focuses on:
• Network Operations
• Information Technology
• Research and Development

Research and Development

Pilgrim is the only service provider of its kind with a fully staffed R&D group. Pilgrim's R&D includes well-qualified and experienced software designers. Engineers are on call 24X7 and are available for consultation and product development assistance. Pilgrim's development engineers create our own proprietary systems and can easily integrate them with our partners' platforms.

Physical Architecture

Pilgrim provides international long distance services through its state-of-the-art digital switches and transmission facilities as well as through its interconnections with major international carriers. Currently we own and operate digital switches capable of PRI, C7, SS7, and other signaling commonly used by major international carriers. Our operations employ advanced systems including call collection and call data storage linked to a proprietary reporting system which enables management to determine gross margin by destination country, by customer, as well as for overall operations in a daily basis.

Several interconnecting modules or services comprise Pilgrim's primary architecture. Provisioning of these services is flexible and since the facilities employ dynamic allocation of resources, any combination of services can run concurrently with capacity scaled automatically based on instantaneous demand. All switches, gateways and servers are built on Telco grade, fully redundant platforms. Advanced network equipment is used for load balancing, switching, and firewall.

Network & Fault Management

Automatically monitoring the Management Center system enables on-site personnel to provide fault management capabilities for all the Pilgrim Conversational Services components, assuring high reliability and system availability. The Management Center includes necessary networking elements to securely connect the platform to the external environment.

Traffic Monitoring

By analyzing the platform activity, the Management Center monitors traffic on a near-real-time basis generating traffic-related alarms and detecting abnormal traffic situations.

Technical Support

The technical support system has been designed to provide a fast and efficient response to critical, major and minor problems. The average response time is 30 minutes for critical problems, 4 hours for major problems and no more than two business days for minor problems. The Engineering Group is available to the customer's technical point of contact, customer care point of contact, and other similarly qualified engineers. Technical Support is accessible by telephone, fax or email, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Customer Service

Pilgrim's multi-tiered call center provides users with fast answers to all their questions. Our custom-designed CRM system forwards each call to the best-qualified Customer Service Representative available. Pilgrim's Call Center and custom CRM system are accessible to users 24X7. Highlights of our customer care program include the following:
• Skills-based routing
• Custom CRM tracking system
• Load-balancing
• Problem resolution procedures and commitments
• Spill-over protocols
• Full-time training department
• Bilingual representatives available 24x7
• Immediate Management escalation procedures
• Call volume and occupancy reports daily, weekly, monthly

Pilgrim customer service capabilities and capacity provide outstanding incoming call management, customer tracking, and problem resolution exceeding industry standards. Call center facilities were recently overhauled and completely modernized.

Customer Service Representatives

Pilgrim has a well-trained sophisticated support staff capable of handling millions of callers per month without increasing existing staff or expanding facilities.

Our skilled staff has low turnover and members interact in a positive "teamwork" environment. Our permanent, full-time training department provides a structured quality assurance and coaching program that includes outside monitoring, proven service-level adherence, and an experienced call center management team. Current CMS reports allow for call volume and occupancy reports on an interval, daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Marketing

Pilgrim has over ten years of experience implementing cooperative marketing campaigns with existing partners and can share expertise with any of our partners. We approach the exciting development of marketing strategies with energy, intelligence and process.

Aligned with our partner's strategic path, Pilgrim's promotion strategy process of message, interface, and branding ensures goal fulfillment by sharing the right things with the right audiences. From voice talent selection to customized scripting, we remain focused on the dynamics of the buying environment. We apply a holistic approach to our partners' branding requirements. We believe that insight and intelligent use of resources are the key to successful branding and promotion.

Billing and Reporting

Pilgrim's applications support both prepaid and postpaid customers. For postpaid accounts, the Management Center supports end-user billing by processing and aggregating call detail records and delivering them to a partner's billing system.

In addition, billing capabilities support a revenue-sharing model by producing charging information. The Management Center includes a powerful reporting tool that provides detailed reports regarding the Conversational Services Platform performance and traffic.