It's 6 a.m. and my alarm clock is annoying me. It can buzz but it can't hide. I whack it with the back of my hand and the deep morning silence reasserts its rightful ownership of the house. I pad my way downstairs to the kitchen and fumble with the sacred coffee maker. I need alertness by 6:30.

At precisely that impious hour, the phone rings. A voice a continent-width and three time zones away asks: "Are you the Victor Rozek who wants to participate in the IBM conference call?" None other.

This morning in its New York offices, IBM adheres to its quarterly custom of trotting out three customers who, in return for breakfast and lunch, will attest to the unique and redeeming virtues of the AS/400. Today's presentations are positioned squarely on the leading edge, with testimony featuring adventures in wireless communication, client/server and imaging, and telephony.

The first presenter is a warehousing and transportation company with the utilitarian name of Dry Storage Corporation (DSC). Founded in Illinois in 1960, DSC now manages a whopping 10 million square feet of warehouse space scattered across the nation. Each warehouse supports some 50 clients, all of whom fret about their own particular knickknacks and frequently call Dry Storage to verify inventory levels or delivery schedules, or presumably to confirm that their stuff is still dry.

So, imagine dozens of warehouses, hundreds of customers and an armada of trucks picking up and delivering stuff all over our quadrant of the paved planet. Then imagine, say, a fence-post manufacturer from Wagon Wheel, Wisconsin calling and asking when his fence-posts will arrive in Peach Pit, Arkansas. For DSC, the answer was provided by wireless radio frequency communication.

Using software developed by Business Partner Solutions Inc., each DSC truck driver can now immediately provide delivery status from the cab of his truck using any DOS-based portable computing device. Drivers update the headquarters AS/400 D70 over the ARDIS radio frequency network. Then, through electronic data interchange (EDI), real-time delivery information is automatically made available to customers.

That solves the problem of tracking goods in transit, but what if a customer wanted to know the status of his warehouse inventory? At DSC, such information was traditionally batched and input by a data entry clerk, resulting in delays and potential inaccuracies. A second wireless application, using a Telxon unit in the cabs of forklifts, provided the solution. Forklift operators now instantly update the D70 with the status of all incoming, outbound and on-hand inventories. That information is then distributed to four other remote AS/400s on a T1 network. DSC's customer service representatives all over the country now have access to real-time information through PS/2s and X-terminals.

According to Dennis Waliczek, DSC's vice president of Information Systems, the AS/400 wireless solutions have several advantages. They provide the company with a proactive, real-time system, instantly responsive to customer queries. Regardless of their education level, employees can quickly learn the system and take pride in operating high-tech, leading-edge devices. The system pays for itself in 2-3 years, and some headcount savings have been realized.

It would be interesting to speculate how much warehouse space Massachusetts Financial Services (MFS), the second presenter, would require. The firm manages 34 billion dollars of other people's money. Understandably, MFS customers want to keep close tabs on their monies and the mutual funds they feed. To provide their customers with answers, MFS personnel annually process 2.2 million manual transactions, respond to 85,000 letters, and answer 1 million phone calls.

An internal study revealed that MFS spent about 50 percent of its time and resources managing this crushing work flow. But this costly investment was failing to provide value-added customer service. Quality measurements disclosed that the satisfaction rate for customer service stood at only 82 percent. On a volume of 2.2 million inquiries, that implied 390,000 unsatisfactory transactions.

MFS found its answer in the AS/400's client/server and imaging capabilities. An AS/400 E70 using Automated Work Distributor (software based on IBM's ImagePlus), routes image, fax, phone and text transactions to the appropriate PS/2 client. The PS/2 then reroutes updated information back to the AS/400 for further processing and filing. The results are sent to an outsourced IBM 3090 for transaction processing.

MFS achieved some notable results. Customer satisfaction measurements rose from 82 to 99 percent, and the personnel requirements for managing the work flow were halved. Manual transactions that once took up to a week to complete are now completed the same day. But most important, according to John Reilly, senior vice president of Data Processing, was the fact that "imaging allowed us to refocus our business on what really counts to our customers-customer service."

Whew! I'm sold. But while my head is full, my stomach is conspicuously empty. Right on queue, the voice in my speaker phone announces a 15-minute break with platters of food being served in the conference room. I pad dejectedly to the fridge. A lonely yogurt carton stares back at me.

The voice returns and announces the next presenter: a company named CIBA Vision. CIBA decides to dazzle its New York audience with a video. I'm out of luck. I listen to a rhapsodic narrator explain how-starting with a single employee in 1980-this Atlanta, Georgia firm has grown to be the largest contact lens provider in the world with a strong presence in 36 countries. The 67 employees in CIBA's customer service department now answer an average of 10,000 calls each day. On peak days, a single employee may process up to 190 calls. Not all callers speak English, and not all customer reps are multilingual.

CIBA Vision wanted to avoid shuffling customers through the phone system maze, while minimizing abandoned calls. The AS/400, utilizing CallPath/400, in combination with a ROLM phone system and AT&T, provided the solution.

CallPath/400 routes incoming calls to the appropriate agent or department. The AS/400 provides CIBA's customer service personnel with immediate information about customers the moment they answer the call including customer name, location and transaction history. The system logs orders and responds with shipping and pricing information in real-time. Electronic orders are received, and confirmation is returned, automatically by fax through the AS/400.

When customers cannot wait in queue for the next available agent and hang up, the system registers the time, phone number and customer name. Typically, an agent will return the customer's call within 20 minutes with relevant account information already displayed on his screen. But CallPath/400 has been so successful that the instance of abandoned calls has been reduced to one-half of one percent. The problem of multilingual calls was solved by a feature of the AT&T network which identifies and supports six different languages and allows calls to be routed to the proper queue. When it comes to applying technology to solve customer service issues, CIBA appears to have 20/20 vision.

A continent away, the presentations end and the participants are invited back into the conference room for lunch. If I strain, I can almost hear the faint sounds of chewing. I hang up and pad back upstairs. It's 9 a.m. on the West Coast--time for my nap.

Victor Rozek has 17 years of experience in the data processing industry, including seven years with IBM in Operations Management and Systems Engineering.

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