eKourier April 2020

FEATURE

A NEW ERA FOR CCC, WORKING REMOTELY DURING COVID-19

Customer Care Team celebrate the launch of Mitel (left to right): Deepa Chirayath, Fiona Harding, Ophelia Keshishian, Salma Rahmani, Liezl Espiritu

W hen we began tendering for a new Contact Centre Software twelve months ago the last thing on anyone’s mind was a Global Pandemic. Our system was outdated and changes with the NBN were rapidly coming into effect at our Team Headquarters. We needed to act swiftly to ensure no disruption to our customers experience. After an extensive tender process, Mitel was awarded the successful supplier, a company committed to partnering with us to build a Contact Centre tailored to our customers expectations. Our current Avaya system had been in place since I started and like all business functions, times have changed. Fifteen years ago working in our Customer Care Team our day was largely made up of answering calls. The Team Member who opened the shift was responsible for printing off the five or so email queries, we had wired headsets (a sure way to knock over that glass or water on your desk), desktop computers and large maps on the wall with coloured drawing pins so we knew where each centre was located (I recall at this time there

customers who don’t wish to lose their place in queue and have far greater visibility over our daily interactions. But by far the greatest asset we have is the functionality for the Team to work remotely. Equipped with laptops, headsets, and softphones our Customer Care Team can now support the business anywhere in Australia or New Zealand. And what lucky timing is that! To celebrate the change we had a hot cooked breakfast launch party at THQ. Feedback from the Team: "Easy to use, better tracking of produc- tivity, being able to code calls makes life easier" - Deepa "The Dashboards allows us to measure performance numerically, in a way, it naturally helps us to work harder to improve performance and results" - Liezl "Transfer option, easy headset use, and I can now monitor how many calls I’ve handled" - Salma.

was about 56). All centre informa- tion including opening hours etc was manually updated, our daily call stats were recorded on a white board and Dymo label makers were all the rage. Today the role of a Customer Care Team Member has largely evolved. The Teams time and expertise is spread across multiple communication channels - phone, email, webchat and podium, sometimes even multitasking these at the same time managing enquiries across 93 centres. In the coming weeks as we introduce stage two, all incoming customer interactions will be handled by our new software. When an email or chat is presented, it will flash on the Team Members screen with 15 seconds to accept before it moves to the next available Team Member. For our customers, it means we can provide exceptional service levels and increased speed of reply across all our communication. We’ve improved our automatic messages to ensure a seamless connection for our overflow calls, added automatic call back features for

Fiona Harding Business Development Manager

13 Kennards Kourier April 2020