Amica Mutual Insurance Company has over 40 offices across the country in which employees receive incoming claim calls and make outgoing sales calls throughout the day.
The company prides itself on its award-winning customer service, so ensuring branch employees can conduct these calls privately and free from distraction is of paramount importance.
Additionally, some field office personnel reported instances where discussions held within private offices were overheard by employees throughout the surrounding open-office areas.
SOLUTION
After trying other sound abatement treatments without achieving the desired results, Amica’s facility management leadership tasked Ron Rivet from the IT team with finding a solution to the problem. Rivet found that sound masking - the process of adding an unobtrusive background sound to an environment - might be a viable option. Rivet met with Biamp, makers of the patented QtPro™ sound masking solution, to learn more and experience a live demo. Impressed with QtPro’s capabilities, Rivet suggested that Amica integrate the system into branch locations as a test.
QtPro was installed in two renovations. Each location had two hard-walled private offices along a wall, as well as a collection of soft-walled, floor-to-ceiling supervisor offices in the center surrounded by cubicles. Small, barely visible emitters (speakers) were installed in the ceiling tiles throughout and were connected by cables above the ceiling tiles to a QtPro control module residing in the branch equipment room.
CONCLUSION With the implementation of QtPro, Amica now enjoys greater speech privacy in private offices and customer service calls alike. Music is sometimes played through the emitters along with the masking, and the system meets Amica’s paging needs as well.
QtPro will now be included in all future branch relocations and renovations and has been installed in most pre-existing locations.
