Outbound call centre O'Keeffe and Swartz has seen increasing growth over the past few years and now intends leveraging off its in-house technology to grow further.
Russell Brown, stakeholder and IT director, says that the company, which develops its technology internally, aims to continue using technology as a means to remain competitive in a growing market place.
The company, which provides a sales service to financial institutions, has just signed up Absa and will be constructing two more call centres in its existing building. However, says Brown, if the company reaches 700 seats next year, it will have used all its available space.
Between 2000 and now, the company has seen turnover increase 700%. While the company made a bottom-line loss in 2000, in the last four years it has seen attributable profit move up 600%.
While growth at this level may not be sustainable, says Brown, the company is already contemplating whether to set up satellite centres or to move the entire operation from the existing building in Randburg, its current base.
Brown says that the company's technology competence rests in two components. The first is a front-end workflow tool, called CroSSell, that allows agents to manage calls from start to finish.
The second, which interfaces with CroSSell, is the predictive dialler. While not new to the industry, Brown believes that the company makes better use of the dialler than other similar firms.
This, he says, is because CroSSell and the dialler work together and share intelligence, making it possible for the dialler to "know" when the call will end, and making best use of each agent's time.
Developing technology
In 2007 the company should benefit from the investments it has made in infrastructure, from least-cost routing and increased line capacity, says Brown.
O'Keeffe and Swartz was recently benchmarked against the top performers in the UK and, for nine months, consistently outperformed UK call centres by 20% to 30% on average.
The company makes use of Microsoft platforms, develops in .Net and runs MS SQL Servers.
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