Leading Jewelry Retailer Streamlines Customer Interaction with Virtual Clients from Wyse Technology

SAN JOSE, Calif. – 17/03/2010 -

Wyse Virtual Clients Simultaneously Delivers Live Streaming Multimedia to Hundreds of Jewelry Television Call Center Representatives

Wyse Technology, the global leader in thin computing and client virtualization, today announced another success story at Jewelry Television.  As a broadcast company with a strong focus on customer care, Jewelry Television wanted their call center representatives to have access to the same information as their customers.  This meant that every CSR is watching a live broadcast of the cable program.  Just a few years ago, this would have required televisions on each desk – an expensive proposition as well as one that would take up valuable desk space.  With advances in virtual client technology, particularly the Wyse TCX virtualization software suite, Jewelry Television is able to have their CSRs access the television broadcast via live stream to their virtual desktops utilizing multimedia redirection.

Jewelry Television reaches more than 65 million viewers in the United States, and millions more via its Web site, www.jtv.com.  As a result of such a large audience, the company has become one of the world's largest jewelry retailers.  As the business has grown, so too has the call center.  Today, approximately 300 call center representatives handle more than 6 million calls per year and thousands per day during the peak holiday season. 

The TCX Suite delivers a variety of solutions all designed to improve the end user experience, including audio, video, multi-display support and USB support capabilities.   The technology solution is the infrastructure upon which Jewelry Television can continue to expand upon and improve the CSR experience.

One part of the TCX Suite, TCX Multimedia, is particularly important at Jewelry Television.  Because TCX Multimedia offers multicast support, Jewelry Television is able to deliver the same multimedia stream to multiple users simultaneously.  This is how the television broadcast is delivered to CSRs.  With multicasting, the video signal can be delivered to all employees simultaneously – like a TV.  This utilizes significantly less network bandwidth than if the media stream was replicated for every user.

"It's important for our CSRs to be looking at the same offers as our customers and potential customers.  We needed a virtual client that could act in many ways just like a television," according to Wesley Baker, Virtualization Architect, at Jewelry Television.  "Wyse gives us that with their TCX Suite capabilities.  In addition, the infrastructure is there with Wyse TCX Rich Sound to begin using our virtual desktops as telephones, eliminating yet another cost.  We also see a good deal of potential in using Wyse virtual desktops as part of a work-at-home program that could result in savings on real estate, power, and other physical support costs."

"When people think of virtual clients and call centers, they tend to think of simple order processing, task worker stuff," according to Maryam Alexandrian, Senior Vice President Worldwide Sales and Channels at Wyse.  "Nothing could be further from the truth and the CSRs at Jewelry Television are proof of that.  Not only are they accessing sophisticated inventory and order-management applications, they are also using their virtual clients to monitor a live stream of the Jewelry Television show.  We feel that Wyse is the only virtual client vendor that can deliver on this capability and are pleased to see if featured at Jewelry Television."

ROI in Feet
Return on investment (ROI) is one of the hallmarks of information technology.  It's typically measured in dollars saved or dollars earned; sometimes in time savings, other times in uptime.  There are perhaps hundreds of ways to measure ROI, but it's rarely been measured in footsteps.  But that's precisely how Jewelry Television's Baker has measured the success of his virtual client deployment at their Knoxville, TN call center.  According to Baker, "Prior to implementing our Wyse virtual clients, our IT team was in the call center 1 or 2 times every day trouble-shooting one issue or another.  Since completing our implementation in February 2008 we've been in the call center 1 or 2 times over an entire year.  In my mind, there's no clearer sign that the deployment has been a success than the simple fact that I don't have to walk over to the call center any longer.  To go from 1 support call per day to 1 call per year is just amazing, and we couldn't have done it without the great products from VMware and Wyse.  The way they just worked together so well made everything else easier.  Our support costs for the Wyse/VMware solution is as close to zero as possible."

"Less than two years ago, we had an IT management nightmare," concluded Baker.  "In addition to the daily support issues, we had to have a total of 30 servers up and running to support our previous thin clients and the CSR applications.  Today we have a total of 4 connection servers and 6 ESX hosts, which host all 300 virtual machines."

For more information about Jewelry Television, and to learn more about retail solutions from Wyse, please visit http://www.wyse.com/solutions/retail/

About Wyse Technology

Wyse is the #1 vendor the world's largest businesses and institutions trust for scalable thin-client computing solutions. Wyse provides the hardware, software, and services that shift computing complexity to the network, reducing cost, liberating IT departments from unnecessary support and maintenance functions, empowering users to be more productive in their jobs, and protecting and improving access to critical information and business applications. Headquartered in San Jose, California with offices worldwide, Wyse has been #1 in thin-client market share for the last eight years, enjoys a close partnership with Citrix Systems, and has been named Microsoft "Embedded Partner of the Year" for three years. Wyse customers include FedEx, Best Buy (Canada), Quaker Foods, and Gold's Gym.

For more information, visit the Wyse website at http://www.wyse.com or call 1-800-GET-WYSE