T-Com Puts Customers First with Microsoft Customer Care Framework
Croatian telco significantly improves responsiveness to customer inquiries, enables faster service activation and boosts call center productivity.
NICE, France, May 22 // -- Today at TeleManagement World '07, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced that T-Com, Croatia's leading provider of fixed line, Internet and wireless communications services, has implemented Microsoft(R) Customer Care Framework (CCF) to improve performance across its contact centers. Based on Microsoft .NET technology, CCF has enabled T-Com to consolidate different systems, processes and applications into one common customer care platform, enabling call center agents to access all customer data through a single view. T-Com has achieved significant results in processing inbound calls, bringing the average time taken to capture customer details from three minutes to less than one minute. Additional benefits include more rapid service activation and improved productivity from call center agents.
With 10 applications running across hundreds of call center desktops, T-Com was experiencing customer service issues, specifically the long time it took to satisfy customer requests and the high potential for error when setting up new customer accounts. This was especially true for DSL accounts, which required two people to manually enter data into different applications that needed to be reconfigurable to adapt to changing customer needs.
Using CCF, call center agents can now access a single interface and make rapid changes to service provisioning across multiple applications, significantly reducing both customer waiting times for service activation and data entry errors.
"Our vision was to implement a solution that improved the operational efficiency of our agents while providing customers with the best possible customer care experience," said Davor Maric, assistant director for customer care services at T-Com. "By unifying applications within one interface, we have brought customer response times down to less than a minute and increased our ability to cross-sell new services thanks to our agents having a 360- degree view of customer accounts."
Where agents previously logged into multiple applications using different passwords, access is now provided through a single screen, reducing complexity on desktops while providing a unified view of the customer. Agent-to-agent and agent-to-customer instant messaging now provides enhanced communication capabilities, while integration with a fax channel (used for DSL orders) has reduced the need to manually enter data from forms.
Through a single user interface, contact center staff can now access full historical data for customer accounts, enabling them to promote new services in a personalized manner. By deploying CCF, T-Com has also created a more enjoyable and productive working environment for its employees, giving them the tools to be more proactive with sales opportunities and making routine tasks effortless and more intuitive. Training has also been streamlined, with new staff now requiring minimal training on the new system.
"Today, carriers need to solve the issue of growing their revenue by developing new services while keeping a watchful eye on their bottom line -- but without sacrificing the customer experience. Add to that intense competition, and customer service becomes a key battleground," said Michael O'Hara, general manager for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. "Our CCF solution allows carriers to win these battles by deploying new services that are underpinned by powerful yet easy-to-manage customer care, billing and service provision solutions."
With phase one of the implementation nearly complete, T-Com is now looking to launch new customer service channels, such as a self-service portal, which can be managed using CCF. This way, T-Com will continue to enhance its subscriber experience, provide agents with more information to support sales opportunities and improve workflows.
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Source: Microsoft Corp.
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