RightFax solution ensures hassle-free client communication at Absa Direct

Absa Direct has extended its RightFax solution from Captaris, enabling its contact centre representatives to deal more efficiently with customers, and clients to transact more easily through the call centres.

Inez Taylor, contact centre solutions manager at Absa Direct, says the Absa Group division initially used a small analogue RightFax solution at its Johannesburg and Pretoria customer care centres.

"Our client interaction volumes at the call centre increased to approximately 720 000 contacts monthly and it became obvious that our electronic faxing capabilities had to expand substantially to avoid customer dissatisfaction," says Taylor.

Taylor says Absa Direct commissioned QuartzIT Technologies to upgrade its two small RightFax servers to full 30-channel primary rate ISDN-capable solution and integrated its back-end applications, Encompass and CustomerView, to RightFax.

This means that customised fax documents can be created, with a specific recipient`s name and contact details being merged automatically with the fax information, and sent directly to the fax server. The status of these documents is automatically reported back to the sending application and users can immediately act on failed faxes.

Taylor says the RightFax / CustomerView integration also enables customers to receive faxed information from an interactive voice response self-service facility, allowing customer care representatives to focus on complex client queries.

"Furthermore, with least-cost routing, a technology that routes faxes via the least expensive path, faxes can be dispatched between the contact centres via wide area rather than the telephone network," adds Taylor.

Taylor says each Absa Direct call centre site now effortlessly handles between 1 000 and 2 000 electronically sent and received fax pages per day.

"The RightFax solution has truly provided our clients with excellent service in the fax arena, while reducing Absa Direct`s document delivery costs significantly," says Taylor.

Moreover RightFax greatly enhances productivity by enabling Absa Direct`s contact centre representatives to electronically receive and respond to client queries via faxes sent directly from their workstations and from the two application systems.

Taylor says Absa Direct found the RightFax solution exceptionally simple to upgrade with AmVia accredited business partner, QuartzIT, completing the installation promptly without any difficulty.

"The fact that RightFax runs on a Windows NT platform and its security can be integrated into the Microsoft Domain Structure, a standard within Absa, made the solution all the more attractive," comments Taylor.

Dimitri Constantopoulos, director: QuartzIT, says RightFax can also be integrated with Absa Direct`s planned new e-mail solution, to allow an even wider range of electronic interactions with customers.

"With RightFax, Absa Direct has experienced a significant return on investment, and other Absa entities such as Absa Bank and Absa Brokers have also implemented RightFax," he concludes.