German pay-TV operator Premiere has outsourced the
technical operation of its call centres to the IT services
provision arm of BT.
BT is equipping Premiere with a total of 12 sites with a voice
over IP (VoIP) platform with which it is intended that Premiere’s
customer service agents will be able to deal with enquiries even
more quickly and efficiently.
The project, whose contract value is in the double-digit
millions, which was implemented jointly with the VoIP solution
provider Wicom and the system house Frings Datacom, and involves
kitting out one of the largest IP-based contact centres in
Europe.
Premiere chose this innovative concept particularly because of
the technical solution, but above all because of the usage based
business model. “Rather than having to invest in new technology, we
pay a monthly rental which depends on how much we actually use the
system”, explains Kai Mitterlechner, project & distribution
control director at Premiere. “This means we can respond to
seasonal peaks in a very flexible way.” Premiere’s resources can be
better utilised by routing incoming calls on the different service
call numbers within a “virtual” call centre.
Premiere has over 3.2 million subscribers and a high quality of
service for operations, including a customer hotline for technical
support and smooth processing of pay-per-view orders, is essential.
Each year Premiere receives over 10 million telephone calls
and three million written enquiries; as many as 1,300 agents work
around the clock at 12 call centres in different locations.
The company’s 12 sites which have hitherto operated separately
will be combined into a single, virtual call centre, with the
intention of leading to more flexible forwarding of enquiries and
faster processing. Premiere opted for a hosted service with the
central server components distributed in fail-safe fashion on two
BT computer centres. This means that the contact centre can be
scaled in a flexible way without further investments in
hardware.