InterZer: Improving customer service and attracting new customers

Customer

InterZet is one of the fastest-growing Russian telecommunications carriers, providing Triple Play telecommunications services that are used by more than 450,000 people monthly. 

The Challenge

InterZet is an actively growing company that is expanding its geographic presence and building its client base. Every month the carrier adds 10,000+ new customers; during peak hours its call center receives 600+ calls. The company’s swift growth stressed the InterZet call center until it was unable to handle the increasing number of incoming calls while maintaining high quality service, forcing customers to go through long waits for call processing, and many calls were lost or unanswered. Unable to handle the huge number of incoming calls, InterZet had to partially outsource services to external call centers. After analyzing the costs, InterZet management made the conclusion that, due to a number of reasons including cutting costs, it would be much more efficient to build up its own call center. 

Main Project Objectives: 

• Create a modern call center for 275 agents 
• Improve the quality of telephone service: reduce the number of lost calls, reduce the average wait time, and increase the number of calls handled automatically 
• Cut the costs entailed in handling a large number of calls during peak hours without compromising the quality of service, effectively managing the call center’s business processes, campaigns, and resources
• Enable the quick launch and simultaneous management of several campaigns for attracting new customers 

Solution: Noda Contact Center

InterZet hired Noda, a leader in the call center solution development market, to build a high-performance, robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant IP call center for 275 agents. To build the InterZet call center, Noda used its cutting-edge software solution Noda Contact Center, which enables the automation of large call centers with 1000+ agents. The product combines the functionality of an advanced IP call center (VoIP) with a company management system.

Handling a large number of calls

The new call center software can reliably handle and route 600 simultaneous calls, balance the load between the call center’s agents, record conversations, and provide IVR services. InterZet’s customers can call the company’s hotline or tech support, both of which work 24/7.

Fast performance build-up

During the first phase of implementing the Noda Contact Center solution the creation of only 100 agent workplaces was planned. However, thanks to the inexpensive Noda Contact Center licenses, the call center’s expansion costs were lower than expected, making it possible to push the number of agent workplaces to 275 in less than six months without interrupting the call center’s operations for a single hour. 

Call handling and routing

During peak hours, Noda Contact Center can automatically forward up to 20% of inbound calls to the IVR system, thus reducing the agents’ load. When routing a call, the system takes into account whether the phone number is in the database, the amount of money in the customer’s account, and so on. On the basis of this information, the call may be forwarded to the IVR system, in which case the customer hears a message reporting an insufficient amount of money on his/her balance, a breakdown in a network segment, etc. Thus, the customer can automatically receive an answer to his/her question, making it unnecessary for call center agents to handle such general calls. 

It now takes only 20 minutes to create a new incoming or outgoing campaign. The user-friendly interface lets the agent simultaneously view and control all running campaigns, such as telemarketing, sales lead generation, and questionnaires. Outbound calls can be made using predictive, progressive, or preview algorithms. 

A handy interface for agents

When an agent receives a call from a customer, a special window opens on the agent’s display, including a greeting, a conversation script, and a call registration form, with the additional ability to search the project database. The customer’s profile with detailed information (prices applied, personal data, etc.) is also available. Thanks to this one-stop shop for call handling, the average call handling time fell by 10%.

Simple integration with the telecommunications agent’s information system

When implementing the project, Noda Contact Center was integrated with InterZet’s billing system, a crucial system for any business. Thanks to the automatic identification of the customer in the billing system when receiving a call, the agent receives all the information necessary to handle the call.

Hot backup support

Noda Contact Center is a product with a guaranteed fault tolerance of 99.99%, supporting alerts and fault notification. In the InterZet call center, a system for backing up the call center’s settings to an external backup server was deployed and set up, which automatically kicks in when the main server fails. Noda Contact Center provides centralized recording of conversations, which can be accumulated, kept in intermediate storage, and then archived. As a result, the number of technical errors and malfunctions at the call center fell by 70% in comparison with the previous system. 

Project Results

The InterZet call center staff now works in an advanced, robust IP call center (VoIP). Customer service has been considerably improved:

• Up to 20% of customers that call in are now processed automatically using the IVR system intended for customer self-service
• The average agent response wait time fell by 45% (from 28 seconds to 15 seconds)
• Automatic caller identification and the customer profile display on the agent’s monitor reduced the average call handling time by 10%
• The call center can now simultaneously launch an unlimited number of campaigns 

As a result of implementing the Noda Contact Center solution, InterZet has significantly improved its customer service and attracted many new customers. The company no longer outsources any services to external call centers and its call center operation and maintenance costs are lower than ever.