Johannesburg, 23 Jan 2013
Iemas is a co-operative that has been providing South African employees and companies with financial services for more than seven decades. In today's competitive financial services industry, excellent service is crucial, and a fully functional, effective and efficient contact centre is critical to the smooth running of operations.
The contact centre is often a customer's first and potentially only point of communication with the provider, which makes it critical in providing services and support to the company's customer base. When the company's original contact centre solution, installed in 2006, could not deliver on expected benefits anymore, Iemas turned to the Presence solution, and Jasco Enterprise as its Presence maintenance and support partner.
"Iemas' previous technology platform was not supporting their needs. They needed a multi-channel solution to incorporate e-mail, SMS, voice and more into a single contact centre platform. The reputation of Presence in the market preceded it, and after conducting a proof of concept (POC), Iemas could envision the difference it would make to their business and strategy achievement, and invested in the solution," says Paul Fick, Managing Director at Jasco Enterprise.
The contact centre offers an all-encompassing service to members, including short-term insurance and financing products. Presence technology was acquired in April 2010 to cater for the multi-channel needs of Iemas' members, allowing Iemas to offer faster and more efficient processing of applications, claims and other transactions, as well as an information hub, which provides a one-stop solution that suits the needs of all Iemas members. Members can use the contact centre to access products, services, advice and information through telephone, SMS and e-mail, wherever they are and whenever they need services. For Iemas, the solution is cost-effective, enabling the co-operative to meet customer expectations as well as to measure, manage and improve on service levels.
"We chose Presence because it offered the most cost-effective solution and the best value for money to suit our needs. It is an 'all-in-one' solution, and all our core applications were adaptable to Presence, so we achieved adequate levels of integration as well. The support from both Jasco and Presence internationally has also been exceptional, and we have seen a number of benefits from using this solution," says Rachael Naidoo, Operations Manager of Iemas Contact Centre.
Using a variety of Presence tools, including Preview, Inbound, Outbound, Scripting and Email functions, Iemas has already noted improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, most notably through the ability to conduct campaign management as well as through accurate measurement tools which provide business intelligence information.
With campaign management, both inbound and outbound calls are generated to agents without human intervention to ensure prompt and effective service delivery to Iemas members. Inbound campaigns generate incoming calls to specifically skilled agents via the Automatic Call Distributor, and outbound campaigns generate high volumes of calls via the Presence dialler for the outbound agents.
"As a result of the campaign management feature of our Presence contact centre solution, we have reduced our costs by more than 20%. Agent productivity has doubled, and human error has been reduced by 99% through automated outbound campaigns. This all adds up to vastly increased customer satisfaction," Naidoo adds.
Accurate measurement tools and business intelligence enable trends to be reported on and highlight areas for improvement. Reporting tools enable Iemas to monitor and maintain service level agreements (SLAs) and improve standards across the business. Reporting also enables productivity gains, ensuring that time wastage can be identified and rectified, the schedules are adhered to, and that staff occupancy can be optimised to ensure the most efficient processes possible. These benefits, along with multi-channel capability, have enabled significant growth and improvements in query handling.
"We have also seen growth in our eSales department using our multi-channel contact centre. Our sales turnover from this department shows significant growth due to the increase in efficiency and effectiveness. We have also been able to introduce Voice Recorded Loans supported by Presence contact centre technology. Instead of requiring contracts to be printed and signed, Presence allows us to use voice calls as verbal contracts, and stores these recordings for compliance purposes," says Naidoo.
"Iemas has seen substantial benefits from partnering with Jasco and utilising the Presence solution. We provide a professional services team to analyse business gaps and provide feedback, which helps Iemas to identify current skills and those needed in future. Jasco is not only Iemas' contact centre business and technology partner, but also their contact centre trusted advisor," concludes Fick.
As part of a wider project to increase efficiency and assist with making more informed business decisions, Iemas is also planning on implementing and incorporating other aspects of the business onto the Presence platform.
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