Spescom DataFusion, the contact care division of international technology innovator and JSE-listed Spescom, is implementing one of the country's largest outbound call centres for Blake & Associates.
Blake & Associates specialises in accounts receivable management and is part of the Blake Holdings Group.
Blake & Associates, one of SA's leading credit recovery organisations, represents major enterprises in the financial and retail sectors. The company has created a large call centre, with advanced facilities, based on a Spescom DataFusion solution geared to handle both inbound and a vast amount of outbound calls. The technology will also allow the company to compete worldwide by providing international call centre services.
"With a focus on the market sectors in which we are well established, our primary requirement was for a flexible solution that was scalable," says Howard Blake, chairman of Blake & Associates. "This enables us to expand within existing markets, as well as explore new ones.
"The added benefits include better productivity, economies of scale, greater control of the call centre operation and the quality assurance that is vital to providing our clients and their customers with a first-rate service."
Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion, explains the rapid progress of the project.
"The order was placed in August and completion is scheduled for the end of September," he says. "This is unusual, when one considers that this is a 600-seat call centre aiming at fast expansion to 1 000 seats or more.
"The core of the solution is an Avaya Call Centre, which is backed up with DataVoice Orion Professional voice recording. An important addition for Blake & Associates is the RealConnect Dialler, which means that agents do not waste time selecting calls or getting useless connections to unanswered phones or fax machines."
The RealConnect Dialler is an intelligent speed-dialler which automates some of the most time-consuming aspects of outbound call centre operation.
"The DataVoice Orion Professional provides the customer with excellent management and monitoring abilities," says Fick. "It captures the call content for verification of transactions, in full compliance with the relevant legislation, and allows management to monitor agents' actions and apply training programmes."
CERA (Controlled Environment Recording Activator) software, an optional extra with the DataVoice Orion Professional, allows a specified percentage of calls to be monitored, along with the resulting screen activity.
"Training is an essential focus in our company," says Blake. "We have our own in-house programme which is better supported with the new technology. This is critical for dealing with contracts and transactions involving such a large volume of customers - we have over 600 phone lines to deal with.
"The DataFusion solution represents a major capital investment which is aimed at taking what is basically a very conservative business to a whole new level of service delivery and efficiency, while simultaneously ensuring that we have the quality assurance we seek and the further ability to expand our business with a true competitive-edge."
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Spescom is a multi-national technology innovator with direct operations in the US, UK and SA.
The group is publicly listed on the JSE Securities Exchange SA (Spescom Ltd), and on the NASDAQ OTCBB : ALTS.OB (Spescom Software Inc).
Spescom addresses the information and communications technology market providing both products and solutions to connect to the network economy, as well as enterprise software to manage information and knowledge.
Specifically, Spescom provides solutions in the areas of access network; enterprise information management; multimedia transaction recording; broadcast; customer contact centres; and test & measurement.
Spescom markets its products worldwide through appointed partners and distributors under the eB brand for its enterprise software, and the DataVoice brand for its multimedia transaction recording solutions.
Spescom's global customer base consists of multi-national organisations including leading enterprises in the utilities, telecommunications, transportation, financial, banking and insurance sectors.
Worldwide, customers include Siemens, British Telecoms, Network Rail (formerly Railtrack), Lloyds of London, Barclays Bank, Abbey National Bank, WH Smith, Caterpillar, Bechtel, AmerenUE, Entergy, Bombardier, Ocean Energy, Sempra Energy, Telkom, SABC, Old Mutual, Eskom, Transnet, First National Bank.
For more information on Spescom, please visit www.spescomsoftware.com and www.spescom.com
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