Call Center Software

Up until a couple of years ago, ASKO, which manufactures and sells home appliances, was using traditional telephone systems in each of its five offices in Australia to handle customer service.



In addition, each office employed a receptionist to distribute calls – plus, the company had to maintain separate phone numbers for each office. Thus, each call center located at each office was basically run as a separate center.

Recognizing that this was an inefficient and costly approach to enterprise communications, the company decided it was time to upgrade to a VoIP call center software solution, in order to consolidate its call center operations. The company ended up selecting Zeacom (News - Alert) Communications Center, Zeacom’s unified communications call center software platform.

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“Before Zeacom Communications Center, our call center agents didn’t have any information, but now they are aware of what’s going on and can measure their own performance,” said Peter Smith (News - Alert), financial controller at ASKO Appliances Australia, in a case study posted on Zeacom’s website.  

 

As a result of the call center implementation, ASKO ended up deploying ZCC across the entire organization – thus all employees are benefitting from the advantages of having a full featured IP-based unified communications system.

ASKO took a phased approach call center consolidation. It started by consolidating its phone numbers to a single toll-free number directing all calls to its Melbourne office. In addition it deployed an IVR system to automate customer service and to more accurately route calls to the appropriate departments.
 

With the ZCC Automated Attendant, callers can directly dial the sales, service or spare parts departments, either using voice commands or the telephone keypad. As a result of implementing the IVR, the number of calls the receptionist in Melbourne has to handle has dropped from 300 to about 20 a day, thus freeing her up to do other duties. In addition it made an immediate impact on caller satisfaction.

Productivity was also improved by having all customer calls routed into three main queues, one for each department, and creating a “virtual contact center” which utilizes agent resources across all five state offices.

Using the ZCC Agent Desktop, ASKO’s reps can now receive real-time information about queues and the status of other agents. They can see how many calls are waiting anywhere in Australia, how long a caller has been waiting, and which agents are available to take calls. Agents can even use the Demand Delivery feature within ZCC Contact Center to pick up a call from the sales queue in another state if it has been waiting for too long. Needless to say, this was a huge step up for a company that hadn’t previously used a call center software solution.

 

As a result of the implementation, agent and employee productivity has been boosted in a number of ways. For example, with ZCC Unified Messaging -- which comes with the system and thus replaced the company’s legacy voicemail system -- agents and other employees now have access to voicemail, email, fax and other contacts through a single email-like user interface – a huge improvement compared to having to dial into separate voicemail boxes and using separate applications for phone, email, fax and chat.

 

In addition, all ASKO employees have access to ZCC Executive Desktop and its powerful “presence” capabilities. “Presence” enables agents and other workers to view the availability status of others on the network – to find out, for example, if they are on the phone, out of the office, in a meeting or on leave. This provides a whole new framework for how contacts are routed throughout an organization. For example, should a call come in for a particular agent, but that agent is busy with a customer, the call can be automatically forwarded to the next “available” agent – or, if so desired, to the agent’s voicemail.

 

Both the Operator Console and Agent Desktop offer a slew of other productivity-enhancing features, such as Speed Dial buttons, information on Recent and Missed Calls, and ZCC Phonebook functionality. The ZCC Phonebook can be used to make calls and identify both incoming and outgoing calls by name and number. It is divided into Global and Personal Contacts with global entries being accessible by all employees while personal entries can only be added and used by an individual.

 

In addition to driving improved productivity, caller abandonment rates have decreased dramatically. This is due in part to the system’s ability to provide callers with queue-specific announcements, estimated time to answer, and position in queue information. Callers no longer have to wait and listen to music, or the same recorded announcement, over and over again. With ZCC, announcements can be targeted to caller interests – for example, if they are retailers calling the sales department, or customers wanting to speak with service. These features have resulted in positive feedback from customers.

The ability to monitor and record calls, track agent performance, and improved reporting and administration capabilities have also dramatically improved ASKO’s operations.

To learn more about the many ways ASKO is benefitting from its implementation of Zeacom’s ZCC call center software platform, click here.