Johannesburg, 11 Dec 2013
Itec Group has launched its national resolution centre in a further move to centralise client interaction and streamline support. The national resolution centre provides a fully automated resolution process for clients, and is an industry-first as it cuts across the full range of Itec solutions, including office automation, document management solutions, electronic content management solutions, telecommunications, and voice and data solutions.
Says Ryan Miles, executive director of Itec Shared Services: "In the past, we would dispatch engineers for every problem, which is not only expensive, but also time-consuming." This is pretty standard across the industry, but becomes an issue when it is done on a national level. "Now automation is at the core of our resolution centre, providing our clients with a streamlined approach to meeting their service needs."
Client queries and issues are sent via electronic channels and, through the inherent workflow capabilities of the system, will be routed to the relevant parties for resolution.
"We know that individuals are fast moving away from telephonic interaction with contact centres, and already 85% of our clients are using electronic channels to communicate with Itec as opposed to the telephone," says Miles. This shift also emerged as a trend in the recently released 2013 Dimension Data Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, which showed that while telephonic interaction is by no means obsolete, client demands are driving the trend towards an omni-channel approach in customer service.
"A key differentiator for us, particularly from an office automation perspective, is our Itec Sentry solution, which automatically reports errors to Itec before our client even knows there is an issue," Miles adds. Itec Sentry is a powerful entire device fault management solution that automates common device maintenance processes as well as fault reporting across the print infrastructure. The software notifies Itec about any problems, so that running out of toner or paper or experiencing a device breakdown won't cause clients hours of lost productivity. "We have integrated this into our resolution centre to allow for quick, proactive fault resolution for our clients."
In addition to this, Itec has developed a mobility solution for their engineers, which integrates with the software platform used within the resolution centre. "This mobility solution again automates everything the engineers need to deal with, from accepting the job, ordering parts, route planning and scheduling," says Miles. Once a job is complete the client will complete a quick survey on the device and sign off that the job is complete, at which point the system is updated in real-time to reflect that the issue has been resolved. "This also allows us to track all activities in real-time, allowing for significant improvements in efficiency."
Miles adds that the resolution centre has been built to scale geographically. "As our footprint grows, we need to ensure that our clients get the same consistent level of service across the country, and by using a state-of-the-art centralised resolution centre, we are able to do just that," he says. "For our clients, it just makes sense. It reduces their downtime, provides them with more efficient issue resolution, and ultimately allows us to better manage the resources on client site," Miles concludes.
Share