Empereon Marketing plans rapid growth with Contact Center as a Service and MPLS solutions from Windstream

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Dec. 19, 2016 -- Windstream (NASDAQ:WIN), a leading provider of advanced network communications, today announced that leading contact center solutions provider Empereon Marketing has selected Windstream to provide highly reliable, scalable and cost effective Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and MPLS transport solutions.

Empereon Marketing provides “end-to-end” customer interaction solutions, including customer care, sales, technical support and help desk services, to customers across multiple industries, always delivering high-quality service to their client partners. The company has grown from 1,200 employees to more than 2,800 this year, and it also operates a debt collection division known as Constar Financial Services.

Windstream worked with long-time channel partner City Communications on the solution. The City Communications team has worked with Empereon for 15 years, and it helped identify Empereon’s requirements and worked with Windstream to design the CCaaS and MPLS solution. City Communications will also provide day-to-day technical support for Empereon.

Bryan McRoberts, chief information officer at Empereon Marketing, said the company made the decision to utilize Windstream’s solutions when it realized that its call center growth model needed to change if it wanted to keep up with the company’s fast-moving clients.

“Windstream’s hosted environment means we can not only address the growth in all of our existing call centers, but we can literally stand up brand new call centers incredibly fast,” McRoberts said. “We simply have to drop in a few redundant MPLS connections and we are up and running in a matter of weeks. As an example of this technology, we provisioned a brand new 1,200-seat call center in the span of less than six weeks, from start to finish. We don’t have to provision anything except our Cisco routers and SD WAN appliances; we literally just drop phones in and we are in business.”

Empereon Marketing selected Windstream’s CCaaS solution because it allows Empereon to only pay for those services the company is utilizing. Additionally, Windstream has the ability to offer both the cloud-based CCaaS solution and the underlying MPLS transport services at all of Empereon’s locations ranging from Arizona to Pennsylvania. Additionally, the transition to Windstream’s cloud-based services was simple and seamless for Empereon employees.

“I love that Windstream is essentially financing our growth with its ‘pay-as-you-grow’ cloud-based OPEX solution,” McRoberts added. “We love the ability to scale quickly and to use Windstream resources rather than have to build our own infrastructure. In many ways, Windstream has become an extension of my internal IT department, and without them we would not have been able to meet the aggressive ramp-up timelines required by some of our newest customers.”

Windstream’s CCaaS delivers cost-effective, flexible, scalable cloud-based contact center solutions. As a hosted service, CCaaS allows customers to keep pace with rapidly changing technologies and applications without up-front CAPEX costs. It also allows customers such as Empereon to create custom analytics reports to analyze interactions across multiple channels, providing data for more informed business decisions.

Windstream offers a full suite of advanced network communications and technology solutions, including voice and data services such as VoIP access, SIP trunking, MPLS and dedicated high-speed Internet. Windstream also offers managed services, cloud computing, disaster recovery and networking services designed to help businesses increase productivity and improve operational costs. For more information, visit windstreambusiness.com.

About Empereon Marketing, LLC
Founded in 1997, Empereon Marketing, LLC is a leading provider of contact center solutions specializing in multi-media, multi-channel, and customer-centric interactions. The company has excelled in achieving client goals, particularly in champion/challenger and pay-for-performance engagements. Empereon also is the parent company of Constar Financial Services, a full-service customer management and accounts receivable company. For more information, visit www.empereonmarketing.com.

About City Communications
Based in Phoenix, City Communications serves growing businesses with efficient, flexible, state-of-the-art telecom systems, including managed network, phones, Internet and cloud services. The company negotiates voice and data rates, coordinates and resolves time-consuming service and billing issues, and operates as a one-stop telecom and data information portal, giving one-click access to all things telecom and data. For more information, visit www.citycommunications.com.

About Windstream
Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:WIN), a FORTUNE 500 company, is a leading provider of advanced network communications and technology solutions for consumers, businesses, enterprise organizations and wholesale customers across the U.S. Windstream offers bundled services, including broadband, security solutions, voice and digital TV to consumers. The company also provides data, cloud solutions, unified communications and managed services to business and enterprise clients. The company supplies core transport solutions on a local and long-haul fiber network spanning approximately 129,000 miles. Additional information is available at windstream.com. Please visit our newsroom at news.windstream.com or follow us on Twitter at @Windstream.

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