Cyara Solutions, a provider of next-generation premises and cloud solutions for simulating, testing, and monitoring interactive voice response (IVRs) and contact center systems and applications, today announced that Thirty-One Gifts, an Ohio-based vendor of stylish and organizational products, implemented the Cyara Solution Suite to ensure the successful deployment and upgrade of a new SIP-based contact center routing platform.

More than 80,000 independent consultants call Thirty-One Gifts' contact center for service on Web-based customer orders, resulting in tremendous end-of-the month and seasonal spikes in call volumes. Critical to the success of the business is making sure consultants reach representatives and do not receive busy signals when calling in for support. Due to tremendous company growth, IVR port capacity was increased and a new SIP-based contact center routing platform was deployed; Cyara was used to load test and validate the new platform infrastructure.

"Making sure calls were routed successfully and that we had no voice degradation was the point of the testing," says Chuck Sunker, manager of consultant support systems at Thirty-One. During testing, the company discovered only half of its port capacity was operational due to a configuration issue between the switch and carrier.

Just three days after deployment, Thirty-One exceeded the pre-test port capacity with end-of-the month calls, which would have resulted in consultants getting busy signals had they not identified and fixed the issue, Sunker said.

"I would say without a doubt after the first load test, when we found the 50 percent port capacity restraint, it was instantly justified to me that this is a great investment," he added. "We certainly found issues that we wouldn't have found without Cyara."

Cyara's automated load testing also enabled Thirty-One to identify flaws in routing logic and make tweaks that improved the calls-per-second metric. "Cyara proved very intuitive, had an attractive price point, and gave us the control we needed in running our own testing scenarios, Sunker said.

The Cyara Solution Suite provides products for testing speech-enabled IVRs and contact center applications from initial deployment through subsequent modifications, fine-tuning ongoing operations in production to ensure exemplary system operation and customer experience.

"Ensuring home-based sales consultants get the phone support and care they need is critical to the success of a direct sales company like Thirty-One," says Alok Kulkarni, CEO, Cyara. "We are extremely pleased Thirty-One Gifts chose Cyara and that our solution contributes to their ability to deliver excellent customer support to their hard-working consultants."

Cyara Solutions is helping Fortune 500 companies around the world redefine their customer service through a better contact center experience. Cyara is a pioneer of next-generation premises and cloud-based solutions for simulating, testing, and monitoring IVRs, voice biometrics, outbound dialers, voice callback, and contact centers. Cyara performs automated load and functional testing and production monitoring of contact center infrastructure and application components, testing companies' end-to-end contact center customer and agent experience in a repeatable, automated manner. Cyara ensures exemplary system operation emulating live calls without requiring or impeding live customers or agents.

About Thirty-One Gifts

Thirty-One is one of the fastest growing direct-selling companies in the country and is the #1 direct-selling brand of exclusive, stylish and practical handbags, fashion accessories, totes, and organization solutions. Through the direct-sales Party Plan model, Thirty-One offers exclusive products for the home and a woman's busy lifestyle, all of which are available through Thirty-One independent consultants. Thirty-One corporate headquarters is located in Columbus, Ohio.