Samsung, VisitBritain choose CosmoCom for virtual contact centres
Johannesburg, 25 January 2008 ] - Intelleca, South Africa's leading provider of voice and contact centre solutions, and the local distributor of CosmoCom, has announced that two large international enterprises have gone live with CosmoCom's virtual contact centre offerings.
They are Samsung Electronics France, the French subsidiary of one of the world's leading consumer and business electronics companies; and VisitBritain, the national organisation responsible for marketing and developing British tourism globally by providing information to potential visitors.
Samsung and VisitBritain have enjoyed a wide range of benefits, including flexibility, reduced costs, enhanced customer service, and, for VisitBritain, use of a single local phone number in each of 13 territories, irrespective of where agents are based.
Intelleca recently won the Contact in Gauteng and National Technical Innovation of the Year awards for its work with CosmoCom in South Africa. CosmoCom is the world's leading provider of hosted IP contact centre technology.
To support its many products in the French market, Samsung had three outsourced call centres, each for specific product groups, and each with a different phone number and its own team of agents and specialists. With 50 new products each month, the specialists required much training.
The teams were located near the French headquarters for training access, but this location was not cost-effective for the team's non-specialised agents. A more efficient call centre structure was desired.
Samsung wanted the scalability and flexibility that a hosted IP-based system provided, so that it could easily add and drop agents, change sites or even outsourcers, and monitor agents from anywhere via the Internet. It preferred a hosted model with a monthly fee for usage, rather than a new premise-based system with a large capital investment. It wanted a complete package of services from a top provider, and a service level agreement, factors that would let Samsung focus on training specialists and serving customers, rather than on maintaining call centre equipment and managing a phone service.
Through Orange Business Services (France Telecom), Samsung consolidated its three outsourced call centres in France onto a single CosmoCall Universe contact centre platform, hosted by Orange Business Services and fully integrated with Samsung's SAP CRM system. Samsung used the flexibility of the platform to restructure so customers and dealers now call a single service number, regardless of the product.
"Using an IP architecture makes agent location irrelevant," says Steve Kowarsky, co-founder of CosmoCom. "Samsung reorganised its locations to a Tier 1/Tier 2 structure. If a customer has to be transferred from a Tier 1 to Tier 2 agent, his account information and problem description reach the new agent as well."
Samsung France has enjoyed a number of benefits:
* Convenient single phone number for all customer service calls;
* Average call time has dropped by 45 seconds, reducing outsourcer cost by 13%;
* Better first call resolution rate;
* Flexibility to locate outsourced agents in the most cost-effective places; and
* Outsourced agents monitored centrally via Internet to insure high service quality.
Samsung's new hosted contact centre in France is a success by every measure, strengthening the company's position as a global leader in customer service. It is being studied by other Samsung European subsidiaries for their consideration as a model for deployment.
VisitBritain
VisitBritain has 21 overseas offices and operates in 36 markets. It had wanted a single global call centre with local agents and facilities distributed among VisitBritain's worldwide markets, but such a prospect had also seemed challenging.
VisitBritain's solution was to use CosmoCall Universe. In doing so, it created a true global call centre that is both local and central at the same time. It also allowed VisitBritain to preserve and leverage the investment it had already made in a global MPLS network and VOIP technology.
To date, VisitBritain has implemented its virtual global contact centre with sites at Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Delhi, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, Paris, Sydney, Stockholm and Tokyo. All operate on a single CosmoCall Universe contact centre platform. Using a virtual contact centre, callers now reach a local agent who speaks their language, while VisitBritain minimises its global telecommunications costs and maintains a uniformly high level of customer service quality across all sites worldwide.
Benefits VisitBritain has enjoyed include:
* Cost-effective worldwide deployment and operation of small contact centres that are sized to match local business volume and demand;
* Low telecoms costs based on local voice connection servers that allow all tourist calls to be inexpensive local calls;
* Preservation of existing MPLS network infrastructure investment;
* Ability to easily monitor and maintain uniform and high customer service quality at all worldwide sites; and
* Flexibility to add sites or agents, including home agents, quickly and easily as business requirements change, without changing the system.
"The experience of Samsung France and VisitBritain is entirely consistent with what our clients in South Africa are enjoying," says Grant Allan, business manager of Intelleca's Managed Services. "We have signed several corporate clients since bringing CosmoCom to South Africa, and we fully expect this model of call centre provisioning to become the local and international standard."
They are Samsung Electronics France, the French subsidiary of one of the world's leading consumer and business electronics companies; and VisitBritain, the national organisation responsible for marketing and developing British tourism globally by providing information to potential visitors.
Samsung and VisitBritain have enjoyed a wide range of benefits, including flexibility, reduced costs, enhanced customer service, and, for VisitBritain, use of a single local phone number in each of 13 territories, irrespective of where agents are based.
Intelleca recently won the Contact in Gauteng and National Technical Innovation of the Year awards for its work with CosmoCom in South Africa. CosmoCom is the world's leading provider of hosted IP contact centre technology.
To support its many products in the French market, Samsung had three outsourced call centres, each for specific product groups, and each with a different phone number and its own team of agents and specialists. With 50 new products each month, the specialists required much training.
The teams were located near the French headquarters for training access, but this location was not cost-effective for the team's non-specialised agents. A more efficient call centre structure was desired.
Samsung wanted the scalability and flexibility that a hosted IP-based system provided, so that it could easily add and drop agents, change sites or even outsourcers, and monitor agents from anywhere via the Internet. It preferred a hosted model with a monthly fee for usage, rather than a new premise-based system with a large capital investment. It wanted a complete package of services from a top provider, and a service level agreement, factors that would let Samsung focus on training specialists and serving customers, rather than on maintaining call centre equipment and managing a phone service.
Through Orange Business Services (France Telecom), Samsung consolidated its three outsourced call centres in France onto a single CosmoCall Universe contact centre platform, hosted by Orange Business Services and fully integrated with Samsung's SAP CRM system. Samsung used the flexibility of the platform to restructure so customers and dealers now call a single service number, regardless of the product.
"Using an IP architecture makes agent location irrelevant," says Steve Kowarsky, co-founder of CosmoCom. "Samsung reorganised its locations to a Tier 1/Tier 2 structure. If a customer has to be transferred from a Tier 1 to Tier 2 agent, his account information and problem description reach the new agent as well."
Samsung France has enjoyed a number of benefits:
* Convenient single phone number for all customer service calls;
* Average call time has dropped by 45 seconds, reducing outsourcer cost by 13%;
* Better first call resolution rate;
* Flexibility to locate outsourced agents in the most cost-effective places; and
* Outsourced agents monitored centrally via Internet to insure high service quality.
Samsung's new hosted contact centre in France is a success by every measure, strengthening the company's position as a global leader in customer service. It is being studied by other Samsung European subsidiaries for their consideration as a model for deployment.
VisitBritain
VisitBritain has 21 overseas offices and operates in 36 markets. It had wanted a single global call centre with local agents and facilities distributed among VisitBritain's worldwide markets, but such a prospect had also seemed challenging.
VisitBritain's solution was to use CosmoCall Universe. In doing so, it created a true global call centre that is both local and central at the same time. It also allowed VisitBritain to preserve and leverage the investment it had already made in a global MPLS network and VOIP technology.
To date, VisitBritain has implemented its virtual global contact centre with sites at Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Delhi, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, Paris, Sydney, Stockholm and Tokyo. All operate on a single CosmoCall Universe contact centre platform. Using a virtual contact centre, callers now reach a local agent who speaks their language, while VisitBritain minimises its global telecommunications costs and maintains a uniformly high level of customer service quality across all sites worldwide.
Benefits VisitBritain has enjoyed include:
* Cost-effective worldwide deployment and operation of small contact centres that are sized to match local business volume and demand;
* Low telecoms costs based on local voice connection servers that allow all tourist calls to be inexpensive local calls;
* Preservation of existing MPLS network infrastructure investment;
* Ability to easily monitor and maintain uniform and high customer service quality at all worldwide sites; and
* Flexibility to add sites or agents, including home agents, quickly and easily as business requirements change, without changing the system.
"The experience of Samsung France and VisitBritain is entirely consistent with what our clients in South Africa are enjoying," says Grant Allan, business manager of Intelleca's Managed Services. "We have signed several corporate clients since bringing CosmoCom to South Africa, and we fully expect this model of call centre provisioning to become the local and international standard."
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