Success Story: Telecommunications. Belgacom. Cover

Transcription

1 Success Story: Telecommunications Belgacom Cover

2 Page 2 Brussels, Belgium Industry Sector... Telecommunications Number of Agents... 1,800 Number of Employees... Over 17,000 Total Annual Revenue billion Euros (2007) Combining its strong background as the national telecommunications operator and the multiple talents of its teams, the Belgacom Group is the principal supplier of integrated telecommunications services in Belgium. As a result of its continuous investment in leading-edge technology, the Belgacom Group is able to provide its private and professional clients with high-capacity solutions on all networks, fixed or mobile, including 24/7 access to telephone, Internet, and television services. The need to increase operational efficiency In 2006, the Belgacom Management Committee (BMC) decided that the number of incoming operatorhandled calls in the contact centre had to be reduced by 1 million a year, whilst at the same time bolstering customer service, boosting sales results, raising employee and customer satisfaction, and enhancing the overall operational quality. The rationale behind this decision was both to control costs and to generally heighten efficiency by providing a more personalised customer experience through the use of blended self- and assisted service solutions. This was a delicate task, given that the project was communicated to the financial world as a major initiative that could impact the company s share price. The CEO and the BMC had the Group s contact centres clearly on their radar screens. Support by top management was crucial for the success of the project, as the challenge was immense in terms of scale, scope, and number of people involved. It was clear that we needed a change of mindset throughout the whole organisation, as it was an end-to-end challenge impacting different processes and different departments, says Gerry Cools, Sales Strategy & Development Manager at Belgacom Group. It was obvious that, in order to transform customer service and reduce the number of incoming calls, an intelligent solution was needed to automate the process flow. As we had been using Genesys for a number of years, they were our preferred technology provider for this new venture.

3 Page 3 The great thing about Genesys dynamic solution is that its self-service features enable contact centres to integrate voice, speech, touchtone, video, SMS, and other multi-modal self-service applications with agent-assisted transactions. These capabilities allow companies to improve customer service levels, drive operational efficiencies, and increase revenue. Gerry Cools, Sales Strategy & Development Manager, Belgacom Choosing a dynamic solution Belgacom s strategy was based on four main objectives: to promote self-service; offer alternative contact channels; optimise agent interactions; and increase the efficiency and quality of call handling. Basically, we wanted to transform a static, script-based IVR into a dynamic contact centre environment that could react with maximum agility to the rapidly changing pace of sales, marketing, and complaint handling, explains Gerry Cools. The great thing about Genesys dynamic solutions is that the self-service features enable contact centres to integrate voice, speech, touchtone, video, SMS, and other multi-modal self-service applications with agentassisted transactions. These capabilities allow companies to improve customer service levels, drive operational efficiencies, and increase revenue. The fact that there is now a direct link between the IVR and our provisioning systems means that customers can get the type of service best suited to their needs for example, self-service for checking rate plans, and assisted service for account upgrades. Genesys calls this IVR transformation the intelligent Customer Front Door, and we agree. Building intelligent functionality The new open platform made it possible to completely automate low value-added calls without any operator intervention whatsoever; this alone reduced the call volume by 300,000 calls a year. A second big advantage of the platform is the flexible menu structure which allowed us to build CRM-powered, customer-friendly menus and basic applications with text-to-speech functionality, Gerry Cools continues. The best way to end customer frustration is to eliminate long cascades of menus and options. By combining the customer s profile or recent transaction history with a business rules engine, we can intelligently predict his or her interest and adapt the menus accordingly, so as not to present irrelevant options. For example: when a customer calls and we know that he received his bill a few days earlier, there s a pretty good chance he ll be calling about that bill so the bill or invoice option will be the first one he gets to hear.

4 Genesys dynamic IVR has enabled us to launch new products without putting an extra strain on our budget. In other words: we have created capacity to tackle new ventures without making new investments, and as such we have indirectly saved a lot of money. Gerry Cools Sales Strategy & Development Manager, Belgacom Success Story > Telecommunications > Belgacom Page 4 Results Number of incoming calls YoY reduced by 1.1 million Overall customer satisfaction increased by 10% Average YoY quality of contact has risen by 5% Revenue generating capacity enhanced by 3% Higher employee satisfaction Reduced time to market Optimised powerful up-selling and cross-selling opportunities Gerry Cools is also quite enthusiastic about the textto-speech feature, which allows him to change menus on the fly. In the old days we had to rely on the IT guys to get changes done, and that could take quite some time. Now we can instantly do it ourselves, which gives us a lot more flexibility in adding messages or adapting menus our agents just enter the message and it becomes part of the IVR. And that is very handy when you have to quickly react to time-sensitive situations, such as a sudden breakdown of the network in one particular region. The new platform also allows the agents to focus on higher value-added issues. When you can handle the majority of your complaints automatically through the IVR, you can decrease the workload enormously, says Gerry Cools. This has not only increased our efficiency, but it has also given us room for other, more lucrative initiatives. It has enabled us to launch new products without putting an extra strain on our budget. In other words, we have created capacity to tackle new ventures without making new investments, and as such we have indirectly saved a lot of money. Realising outstanding business results The bottom line results of aligning the company s contact centres with their new customer-centric approach have been astounding. Belgacom has reduced the number of incoming calls by 1.1 million, decreased the time to market for new marketing campaigns and product launches, created new up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and greatly enhanced customer satisfaction by using skills-based routing based on the customer profile. Research has shown that overall satisfaction has increased by 10%, and the average year-on-year (YoY) quality of contact has risen by 5%. What s more, the revenue-generating capacity has grown by 3% by redirecting more non-sales related calls to self-service functions, which freed up sales capacity in the contact centres. And last, but not least, employee satisfaction has increased because agents can focus more time on high value-added calls now that routine work items are being routed to self-service.

5 Page 5 Solutions Genesys Voice Platform enables businesses to conduct cost-effective customer interactions in new, powerful ways. Voice self-service applications improve customer service and greatly reduce contact centre costs. Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) Platform and Genesys Inbound Voice provide seamless integration with the Genesys Voice Platform and enable voice-assisted self-servicing. Based on the information gathered during the self-service transaction, customers are dynamically routed to the right agent the first time. All these changes were transparent to the market, and customers were never inconvenienced; on the contrary, customers were the true beneficiaries because the contact centres became more efficient and the quality of service increased. The road ahead Gerry Cools certainly isn t going to rest on his laurels whilst there s still plenty of work to be done. For one thing, we want to further develop skills-based routing. We are also investigating knowledge management because the complexity of our products is increasing all the time, so we want to be able to support our agents more thoroughly. We further want to enhance the integration with the Internet by redirecting callers to our Web pages, which will allow our agents to concentrate on providing more personalised attention to high value customers. Gerry Cools is extremely pleased with the co-operation and support he gets from Genesys. They are a very proactive bunch, he says. There is a constant exchange of information, and they provide new ideas and help us evaluate them without any sales pressure. It really is more like a partnership than a buyer-seller relationship.

6 Page 6 Solutions Genesys Outbound leverages the capabilities of the Genesys Voice Platform to provide proactive services such as automated voice notification messages when products or services are ready or available. Genesys intelligent Customer Front Door a unique integrated customer service solution bundle that Genesys delivers with partners. It combines self-service applications running on the Genesys Voice Platform, and Genesys Inbound Voice running on the Genesys CIM Platform. Genesys Worldwide Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the world s leading provider of contact center and customer service management software with more than 4,000 customers in 80 countries. Genesys software directs more than 100 million interactions every day, dynamically connecting customers with the right resources self-service or assisted-service to fulfill customer requests, optimize customer care goals and efficiently use agent resources. Genesys helps organizations drive contact center efficiency, stop customer frustration and accelerate business innovation. For more information visit: or call GENESYS or Genesys is the World s #1 Contact Center Software Company Global leaders in 28 industries answer the call with Genesys, including: > Over 40% of the Global 500 > 21 of the world s 25 largest companies > 63 of the world s 100 largest companies > 18 of the world s 25 largest commercial banks > 7 of the world s 10 largest insurance companies > 7 of the world s 10 largest high technology companies > 16 of the world s 20 largest telecommunications companies > 4 of the world s 5 largest airlines > The world s 10 largest automotive companies Americas Corporate Headquarters Genesys 2001 Junipero Serra Blvd. Daly City, CA USA Tel: Fax: info@genesyslab.com Europe, Middle East, Africa EMEA Headquarters Genesys House Frimley Business Park Frimley Camberely Surrey GU16 7SG United Kingdom Tel: Fax: Asia Pacific APAC Headquarters Genesys Laboratories Australasia Pty Ltd Level 17, 124 Walker Street North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia Tel: v.1-08/08-eu Genesys and the Genesys logo are registered trademarks of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. All other company names and logos may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby recognized Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved.