Service Call at Yellow Pages

Company: NoeticaCustomer: Service Call at Yellow PagesSubmitted by: MCC InternationalDate: March 2000Service Call, a Yellow Pages service, has invested in Noetica’s award-winning call centre and tracking software. Service Call delivers a message answering and call out facility for companies wishing to provide a 24-hour, 365 day, contact point for their customers. Andy Mason, Service Call’s Technical Support Manager, comments, “Synthesys offered us all the key capabilities that we demanded, yet also met our budgetary requirements. We are now expecting to see an increase of anything up to 30% on our agents’ efficiency”.Service Call, based in one of Yellow Pages’ 200 seat call centres, receives calls on behalf of more than 110 clients round the clock, every day of the year.

Service Call chose Synthesys when they moved away from their old predominantly paper based system, Andy Mason comments, “It means that our staff are given the information they need to handle a call, when they need it, via their desktop PCs. We have eliminated any reliance on physical documents, and the reduction in manual data entry has drastically reduced any room for errors.”

Rapid and Easy Scripting

Service Call needed to ensure the software they chose would allow non-IT staff to be able to build and amend scripts quickly and easily, “The script-writing facility in Synthesys is easy to use, and scripts can be created quickly, yet you are still able to produce complex call flows. This is a key part of the software,” notes Andy Mason.Service Call manages calls for two main types of clients. Firstly there are those who need message reception, where agents take out-of-hours or diverted calls for clients.

The system automatically passes on the messages and the agent simply uses the script onscreen to gather the correct information and answer the caller’s questions. “The way the Synthesys system works there’s actually very little room for error. It’s really quite straightforward. That’s one of the best features about it. It presents itself to the agent simply. The screens aren’t over cluttered with a flood of information in which the agent could get lost.

Sophisticated Call Tracking

“The other part of Service Call is a call out service that we operate on behalf of the client. For example, a doctor can divert all calls to us after surgery has closed and we will answer calls in the name of the Doctor’s surgery. If the caller were in need of desperate aid then Call Tracker would prompt the agent to page the Doctor. However if there’s no response, Call Tracker prompts with an alternative action – perhaps suggesting the agent phones the Doctor direct.”Another example is a Supermarket fridge repair service.

We have a client that maintains fridges and diverts all calls to us at night. When the Supermarkets ring us we can, using Call Tracker, pull out the engineers’ rota and establish which engineers are available in the appropriate area and then contact them. We found very few packages that had this tracker type call completion part of the package.”

Eliminating error

Service Call needed to be able to monitor their agents’ performance, and help them improve their skills wherever possible. This has been made easier by using Synthesys.

Andy Mason comments, “With Synthesys you can pre determine a lot of the answers – you can’t get it wrong – whereas on our previous software, you were just given a field to fill in caller details. Now everything is secure on each agent’s desktop. We expect a significant increase in agent performance as a result.”By using the Call Tracking module to manage all required follow up actions to a call, Service Call never leave any calls unattended, “We run client accounts which vary from simple telephone answering to very complex service escalation procedures. Synthesys Call Tracker can therefore either immediately activate a service visit or, alternatively store the message and automatically send a report to the client at a specified time.”

Call Centre Productivity

“Synthesys has dramatically improved the rate of productivity at work here in a number of ways.

We can now set up a client in just half a day with the right screens and script automatically appearing in front of the agent when a call is received. Furthermore, agents can work more efficiently, now that they have all the information that they need to handle the calls on their desktop. Of course, the consequence is that each agent handles a greater number of calls.

Constant Support

“Finally, our installation of Synthesys has been reinforced by the development work that Noetica have done to accommodate our requirements. They’ve done a lot of tailoring; probably 20% of the total product has been tailored to our needs.

Overall, in fact, Noetica have been extremely responsive and more than willing to take on board our requests.”