The
Australian Financial Review, 16 June 1998
The
visiting president and chief operation officer of Aspect
Telecommunications, Mr Dennis Haar, has labelled the new Olympics call
centre in Sydney one of the two most advanced "multimedia facilities
in operation worldwide.
The new facility, built and owned by Connect Interactive Business Services, is able to handle customer inquiries received by phone, fax, electronic mail - even internet video conference calls - on behalf of multiple companies.
Aspect turns over close to $US400 million a year supplying core technology for call centres worldwide, and supplied the core system for CIBS facility.
Mr Haar said the second genuine "multimedia" call centre he had seen was installed at a mutual fund in the United States.
"We've sort of built what everyone's talking about," said Mr Alex Harper, managing director of Connect Interactive Business Services.
"The point of this place is to say people can contact your business at any time, in any medium. The traditional ways of doing business are being redefined." he said.
Mr Harper said he was pitching to medium and large organisations that spend upwards of $1 million a year on call centre operations, but do not want to invest heavily in the infrastructure required to established "multimedia" facilities.
"We're about delivering people to people. The internet is just another medium. What is missing from it now is the human element." Mr Harper said.
"You wouldn't have a retail shop anywhere in the world without a sales person in it, "added CIBS's information systems manager, Mr Paul Dolan.
CIBS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trident, a company which is in turn owned by RAMS Home Loans. Its high powered board includes Mr Terry Cutler, Mr Greg Jones and Mr John Kinghorn.
CIBS's cornerstone clients are RAMS and, as the official call centre for the Sydney Olympics, the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG). However, to stay in business it will need others, both up to and particularly after the Games.
According to Mr Dolan, the technology system installed at the CIBS site cost over $8 million to build. The cost of converting and fitting out the top floor of the old Ten Network building in Sydney's inner-west to seat up to 250 agents was extra. For instance, each operator seat cost $750, Mr Harper said.
Key technology suppliers to the facility are Aspect, which supplied the central call transaction system and computer telephony interaction environment;
and New Zealand's Marketing Technologies, which supplied its Brains customer relationship management software to CIBS; Davox (predictive dialling); Edify (interactive voice response); Nice (call logging); and Lucent Technology (cabling).
Phone services are supplied by both AAP Telecommunications and Telstra, and the centre has a 9,000 line capacity. Over time, CIBS intends to add electronic commerce facilities so it can handle online payments for customers, Mr Dolan said.
Aspect has been in business for 13 years. According to Mr Haar, call centre technology has moved through three distinct phases.
In the 1970s, centres were used primarily by airlines for simple call routing and reporting functions. In the late 1980s, the technology became more flexible and intelligent call routing services such as "push #1 for x" became available.
The next wave came in the early to mid-1990s with computer-telephony integration (CTI) technology that enabled call centre operators to be presented automatically with details about caller as they phoned in.
The latest phase, which we are only now entering, is, according to Mr Haar, the "multimedia" era in which consumer can interact with operators in real and asynchronous time via the phone, internet video conference, electronic mail and fax.