BOTSWANA TELECOMMUNICATION CORPORATION Industry: National telecommunications company provided fixed-line voice and data services Key Solution: Interactive Intelligence CIC call centre solution

Background

Starting in 2003, Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) has embarked on an internal transformation process with the goal of, among other things, extending the range of products and services on offer and enhancing its customer service.

Business Issue

Prior to embarking on its transformation process, BTC did not have a customer service call centre. There was a limited service for operator-assisted calls, which relied on an obsolete 14-year-old technology.

Having identified improved customer service as an important element of its overall transformation process, BTC decided to keep this function in-house rather than to outsource it, due to the complexity of its systems and customer service needs.

BTC also realised that it needed to invest in new technology at the same time as revamping staff recruitment training, business processes and the physical environment. “Performance management was one of the important reasons for investing in new technology,” says Head of Call Centre Services, She-Haam Matthews. “ We needed voice logging capability in particular, to enable our supervisors to identify quality concerns accurately and develop appropriate training solutions.”

BTC issued a tender calling for a basic call centre solution with automatic call distribution (ACD), as well as a voice logger. The required solution needed to be robust and highly scalable to meet BTC's future needs.

Approach

ATIO recommended the Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Centre (CIC) solution. The CIC is a comprehensive, easily implemented contact centre solution for managing all types of customer interactions, from phone calls and faxes to e-mails and web interactions. CIC's all-in-one design requires no separate boxes, interfaces and applications, and removes the complexity often associated with computer telephony integration. Its built-in components and seamlessly integrated add-on applications make CIC ready to use with no complex customisation or administration needed.

Although it was not the cheapest among the solutions suggested in response to the tender, BTC opted for CIC because of its ease of use and integrated design. “We're going to be tied in to this technology for ten years or more, so it made sense for us to choose one that was robust and scalable,” says Matthews. “We particularly liked CIC's modular approach. For example, some other potential suppliers were able to offer an ACD but without an integrated voice logging unit this would have to be supplied by a different vendor. Similarly, we're not ready to implement web and multimedia features yet, but we need this capability to be available to us in future. With other suppliers we'd have had to buy third-party add-ons, which inevitably causes complications like integration problems and the need to manage more than one maintenance contract.”

Matthews adds that the quality of the likely relationship with the supplier was another important factor, given the long-term nature of this investment. “We were particularly impressed with ATIO's understanding of our needs; they seemed to know what was necessary over and above the information we provided, and came up with several valuable ideas even at the presentation stage”.

Solution

The CIC solution was initially implemented for a 25-seat call centre, although this had already grown to 35 by the beginning of October 2003. ATIO provided extensive customisation of the system, for example a series of screen prompts to enable agents to categorise calls, as well as databases linked to BTC's switch and billing systems.

“We have a great deal more information about our customers available to us now than we had before,” says Matthews. “For example, we're able to distinguish between prepaid and contract customers when they request premium services; some of these aren't available to prepaid customers because of the difficulties in billing them, so it's important to know who the caller is and what their account status is at the time of the call.”

BTC also values the additional information generated by the custom screens ATIO created for agents. “ We know exactly how many people are calling about prepaid recharging problems, for example, or scratch cards. This enables us to plan our customer service much more accurately.”

Although an interactive voice response (IVR) system was not part of the original specification, BTC has quickly adopted this additional functionality offered by the CIC solution. “We've automated many services like collect calls and person to person calls,” says Matthews.“ This means we can use valuable agent time to deal with real customer service issues rather than routine services.”

Result

Matthews says BTC has recorded a dramatic increase in the quality of customer service since the system was introduced.

“In September 2003 we were answering just 15% of all international directory enquiry calls within 15 seconds. By the end of September 2004 that was up to 90%. Similarly, on assisted services the number of calls answered within 15 seconds has increased from 56% to 84%.”

CIC's voice logging capabilities have proved particularly useful. At the moment, while the concept of the call centre is still relatively new within the company and our staff are on a steep learning curve, we're logging every call on a 24/7 basis,” says Matthews. “ Our team leaders evaluate six calls per agent per week. We've seen a huge improvement in call quality as a result, to the extent that we are getting compliments on how our calls are handled.”