Travelstart Deploys Interactive Intelligence Customer Engagement Cloud Solution

Travelstart, the leading online travel agency in Africa and the Middle East, has begun deploying the Interactive Intelligence PureCloud Engage solution to transform its customer communications.

PureCloud Engage is an omnichannel customer engagement cloud solution based on microservice architecture running atop Amazon Web Services.

Travelstart has deployed PureCloud Engage at its contact centres in Nigeria, Egypt and Dubai, with a staff complement of more than 50 agents. Travelstart plan to expand its PureCloud Engage deployment to include its contact centre in Cape Town, where their head office is based.

PureCloud Engage is replacing the company's current IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and PBX (Private Branch Exchange) solutions.

"In Nigeria our phone system was very basic, distributing calls from a single line to groups of phones via line hunting,"said Lasse Vinther, group COO for Travelstart, "It was like something out of the stone ages. PureCloud Engage has given us sophisticated skills-based call routing capabilities across locations so clients can reach us faster, while getting more effective service."

Travelstart began looking for a new phone system to address its communications challenges resulting from multiple, disparate solutions based on inflexible architecture.

"Prior to selecting PureCloud Engage, each of our offices had a different, localised phone system and many were based on legacy architecture, which made them inefficient," Vinther said. "We needed a single, cohesive solution that could handle rapid changes in call volume, and could seamlessly transfer calls across countries and offices so our clients could be served faster and more efficiently."

Travelstart also wanted a cost-effective solution that could grow with them. "We wanted a solution that could serve our immediate voice needs, but could also support omnichannel communications, such as e-mail and chat, which we intend to incorporate in the future," Vinther said. "PureCloud Engage was perfect because we only pay for what we use, adding features as we need them, and we can quickly scale up and down. This is especially beneficial since we sometimes up our call volumes dramatically. It's also useful as we seek to open branches in new geographies."

Another reason Travelstart selected PureCloud Engage was because Interactive Intelligence had a local presence in South Africa. "It was vital to have face-to-face communication with our vendor throughout installation and for ongoing support," Vinther said. "Interactive have a strong South African presence. They also sent teams to our offices to get to know us and understand our needs. And they happened to have one of the most original solutions on the market based on numerous analyst reports that rated the company very high on innovation."

While the PureCloud Engage deployment is still taking place, "Interactive Intelligence has made a significant effort to get to know us, which has resulted in a solution that uniquely fits our business needs - and it's positioned for the future so we know we're covered however those needs change," Vinther concluded.