British Telecommunications (BT) and Lucent Technologies today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to offer world-class solutions for the call centre market in the Asia Pacific region.
The MOU signing establishes the framework that will see two global leaders in the telecommunications industry work together on business opportunities in Asia where they will offer fully-integrated call centre solutions using both companies` industry leading products and services.
Call centres are specialised areas within an organisation that are managed, staffed and equipped to handle large volumes of incoming telephone calls, including facsimile, e-mail, the Internet and/or remote video links.
As call centres are designed to increase company responsiveness, productivity and efficiency when dealing with customers, more organisations are turning to call centre solutions to improve their customer service offering. For example, the call centre market in Asia grew by almost 40 per cent in 1997 from the previous year (source: Datamonitor) with continued growth expected as more organisations realise the benefits of adopting call centre strategies - benefits which include increased customer retention, efficient and timely customer service response, customer development and the ability to offer customers flexibility in choosing different business transaction vehicles.
Ian McKenzie, chief operating officer, BT Asia Pacific, said: "Today`s business environment demands the highest levels of customer care and satisfaction. This strategic partnership between two leading communications organisations will offer world class solutions to businesses in Asia - solutions that will allow them to seamlessly and effectively communicate with their customers from around the region.
"As business success is ultimately dependent on effective communications with customers, we are confident that this agreement will pave the way to enabling imaginative solutions for company/customer communications in Asia."
The joint solutions will also capitalise on the convergence of data and voice networks in the call centre environment, by offering customers `best-in-class` technologies including Lucent`s CentreVu call centre platforms and systems software and BT`s Concert Managed Data and Voice Services and Concert Inbound Service (CIS).
Anil Srivastava, regional director of business development, Lucent Technologies Business Communications Systems Asia/Pacific and China, said: "Customers want the potential benefits that convergence will provide. Delivery of these sophisticated communications solutions will require a strong combination such as the Lucent/BT alliance.
"Customers will also benefit significantly from the close integration of not only the technologies which both parties bring to the solution, but also from the business relationship between the two companies," Srivastava said.
BT and Lucent will see a phased roll-out of innovative solutions for identified market sectors some time in the second quarter of this year. These solutions target all major markets in Asia starting with Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. The companies will also develop a joint marketing plan targeting medium-to-large corporations which require networked call centre services in this region.
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BT
BT has had a presence in South Africa since 1994. Today, BT has an expanding business presence in the rest of Africa. This is part of BT`s strategy of building an international network infrastructure, human resources, partnerships and alliances to enable it to deliver communications services to multinational corporations, their extended enterprises and major national organisations anywhere in the world.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems, and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is Lucent`s research and development arm. The company`s Website is http://www.lucent.com. For more information on Lucent Technologies Business Communications Systems in Asia Pacific see http://www.lucent.com/bcs_apac.
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