Companies often have to respond to significantly higher volumes of calls or inbound enquiries that can be seasonal or limited during certain times of the day. While Solidus eCare’s built-in auto-attendant and Interactive Voice Response automate the most repetitive, routine tasks to free up staff for more specialised queries, another cost effective way of tackling such a challenge is extending the boundaries of the traditional contact centre by adding experts as virtual contact centre agents during peak periods.
The new Personal Call Routing feature allows specialists from across an organisation to assist as contact centre agents, while still prioritising incoming calls that are important to them. For example, a sales representative in a retail business can work as an agent but can prioritise contact with key account customers who call on the direct line.
Solidus eCare’s other strengths in terms of integrated mobility, skill-based routing, and Unified Communications with the BluStar agent offer the required features and flexibility needed to implement an “enterprise wide contact centre” and bring knowledge workers into the contact centre.
Implementing an enterprise wide contact centre can save a significant amount of money, negating the need to recruit and train additional contact centre employees, as Avis, the global car rental company, discovered when faced with the prospect of recruiting an additional 300 contact centre agents in Sweden.
Number of abandoned calls reduced by more than 95% and revenue increased by 15% during Avis’ prime season.
Until recently Avis had a central contact centre in Gothenburg, Sweden which managed all rental car bookings across Scandinavia. Due to business growth, call waiting times and the number of abandoned calls had increased significantly but the organisation did not want to hire more contact centre staff. Instead, working with Aastra, they added hundreds of virtual contact centre agents – all existing employees from across the region with the right profile to handle customer enquiries and bookings. As a result, without recruiting any more staff, the number of abandoned calls was reduced by more than 95% and revenue increased by 15% during Avis’ prime season.
Bo Stenlund, Head of R&D for Solidus eCare from Aastra comments, “The new release puts Solidus eCare at the heart of an organisation, creating a very dynamic and powerful platform, making it even easier to manage time, people and costs. As companies look to improve customer service levels, mobilizing the right resources internally can bring significant benefits. The new Personal Call Routing ensures that the wider needs are not fulfilled at the expense of other requirements.”