Famous Brands outsources customer care line to Solutional

Famous Brands Limited, holding company of Steers, Wimpy, Debonairs Pizza, FishAways, House of Coffees, Whistle Stop and Brazilian Coffee Shop, with over 1 000 restaurants across southern Africa, has outsourced its national consumer line and franchisee call centre to Solutional, a local software development company with steeped experience in customer relationship management and call centre solutions.

Solutional recently announced the opening of its Managed Services division with Solutional`s flagship product, Radical, being the software implemented in servicing this division. Solutional has been running the customer care line for Wimpy for the past six months, and based on the success of this outsourcing agreement, the rest of the Famous Brands Limited group of companies has followed suit.

Due to the flexibility of Radicals Package Editor and Business Rules Processor, Solutional is able to run a single call centre for the whole group, with automatic escalations, reporting and call logging requirements specific to each of the individual brand`s unique operating infrastructure and requirements.

All of the brands are run as completely separate business units and the workflow incorporated into the call centre is specific and unique to each brand.

"This was an exciting project for us to undertake as we were able to really put our `money where our mouth is` in terms of Radical`s unique call centre capability," says Paula Hocking, Marketing Manager at Solutional. "Having conducted separate workshops with each of the brands, and realising how different the operations were for each brand, we were able to incorporate all of their individual requirements under one call centre umbrella, with the unique workflow requirements of each brand being seamlessly handled by the automated business rules that we set up in Radical."

All internal franchisee calls related to the internal services that Famous Brands Limited offers to its franchised stores are also logged at the Solutional call centre.

The Famous Brands call centre has been in operation since 8 March and has already proven itself invaluable to Famous Brands in terms of the reports that Solutional have been able to generate about the calls that are logged. Problem areas are easily identified and the area managers are alerted via e-mail and SMS whenever a call gets logged for their area. They are then able to respond to the call and update the call remotely, as the Radical software is constantly monitoring response times to the calls that are logged in order to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction and to make sure that nothing "falls through the cracks". The franchisees are also notified and managing directors of each brand are notified when serious situations are reported. The caller gets regular automated e-mails, keeping them constantly up to date regarding the status of their call and its resolution.

"Solutional has been involved in implementing Radical in call centre and CRM environments nation-wide. As individuals in the organisation we have many years of experience around best practices in the industry. The next logical step for us was to practice what we preach!" adds Hocking.

Solutional is well positioned to offer a cost-effective outsourced call centre solution to SMEs in SA due to the fact that it owns the technology and the intellectual capital involved.