First Technology`s national service centre goes live

A national call centre equipped to handle thousands of service and repair calls from anywhere in SA, has gone live at independent IT solutions provider First Technology`s head office in Kyalami.

In addition to handling calls from First Technology`s maintenance contract customers who were previously serviced directly from one of the company`s 11 branches, the new call centre also serves customers of black-empowerment IT company, CHM Vulwani and Mercantile Bank users. And it acts as the national warranty centre for Compaq, HP, IBM and Lexmark equipment.

First Technology is also in negotiations with a number of other companies to either take over their call centre or implement a call centre for them.

"This first phase of the national call centre roll-out consolidates all First Tech`s service operations under a single umbrella with one toll-free number. This allows First Tech to provide significantly improved levels of service to every customer, regardless of their location," explains Cyril Blackbeard, national call centre manager.

The backbone of the call centre is a comprehensive database with details of customers and every piece of equipment covered by their maintenance contracts.

At present, the database consists of some 17 000 individual items, each with its own SLA (service level agreement). For example, a standalone printer may have a 24-hour SLA - meaning it must be repaired within a day - while a mission-critical server or network switch could have a SLA of two hours to fix.

"Every call is tracked to its successful completion, with procedures in place to automatically escalate calls which are in danger of exceeding their SLA requirements. Internally these calls are escalated to the next level of First Technology`s National Service Management team.

"These procedures also include escalation within our customer`s organisation. An example could be our system automatically informing the IT director who is based at head office, that the server at his company`s Richards Bay Refinery is still down after the four hours agreed upon within the SLA.

"From this point until total resolution of the call, the IT director is automatically informed of the complaint status at the site. This communication is sent either via SMS or e-mail, dependent on customer preference, " Blackbeard says.

"This, however, does not replace the more personal face-to-face and telephonic communications between the parties. This is simply a much faster, more up-to-date way of keeping our customers informed of certain situations."

Blackbeard maintains that it`s not the 99% of service calls which go through the system smoothly that gives a service provider the edge, particularly in the highly competitive IT industry.

"It`s how you handle the 1% problem cases that counts," he adds. An unusual aspect of the call centre is the extensive use of wireless SMS technology to communicate with technicians in the field. A system is currently being implemented to allow the SMS component to be seamlessly integrated with the standard call handling procedures.

When a call comes into the centre, a coded SMS message will automatically be generated to alert a technician to the pending job. When the technician reaches the customer site, an SMS is sent back to the call centre, which will automatically update the call tracking and job escalation system.

"We anticipate this component of the call centre going live within the next few months as we roll-out the second and third phases of our overall implementation. This involves all our customers - from corporates with a national metropolitan footprint to SMEs in platteland towns," Blackbeard concludes.