Enterprise Connection installs new Datatex call centre software so that Virgin Active customers can spend less time doing admin, and more time in the gym
Virgin Active is a major success story: it entered the fiercely competitive local health and fitness industry a few years back, rapidly growing to 77 gyms and fitness centres nationwide. It based this success on the quality and variety of facilities it offered, as well as the convenience and service it offered its customers, who could sign up, change their membership or ask questions - all over the telephone. As Virgin Active grew, it needed to streamline and tighten up its call centre, so it brought in Enterprise Connection to help.
Enterprise Connection, a national technology infrastructure solution provider for the small and medium enterprise, first implemented a new corporate network based on Enterasys networking equipment, and then engineered a sophisticated call centre management solution using systems from South African leader in advanced telephony software, Datatex.
The core of the new system is the Datatex Amethyst product, which allows Virgin Active to record all telephone calls between customers and agents. This allows Virgin Active to monitor the quality of the interactions, but more importantly, creates an archive of conversations to ensure that customer disputes or queries can be resolved quickly and unequivocally, and that mandates for debit orders for membership fees can be taken verbally, saving customers time and inconvenience. Amethyst also allows agents at the 50-seat call centre in Kenilworth, Cape Town, to make notations during the call, which are searchable, and can be retrieved along with the associated recording. This ensures that multiple contacts or exceptions can be handled quickly and efficiently with the customer over the phone.
"The Virgin Active call centre is state-of-the-art, using products developed right here in SA by Datatex. Supervisors can monitor calls and agents in real-time and produce detailed reports to constantly improve customer service through the built-in Agent Quality Management (AQM) tools. Because of the strong network base underpinning its new system, Virgin Active has the flexibility to add more contact centre functionality, and grow the call centre to handle 255 simultaneous recording streams," commented Rob Jones, senior account manager at Enterprise Connection.
Apart from call recording, powerful tools in Amethyst provide campaign management functionality, so if Virgin Active runs a special, it can monitor its effects as the promotion rolls out.
Enterprise Connection also implemented the Datatex Ruby call centre management software to provide a rules-based structure to ensure agents deal with customers consistently and correctly. Ruby also provides management with reports on contact centre efficiency, utilisation and trends. Finally, Virgin Active was provided with the Datatex Emerald outbound call management system to speed up and manage outbound calls, especially useful in Virgin Active`s proactive marketing and customer satisfaction campaigns.
"This is the first time that all of these Datatex products have been integrated into such a tight, seamless system. One of our strengths is the open standards we use in the development of our software, allowing Amethyst to be tied into Virgin Active`s Linux-based member information databases. Caller line identification then allows call centre agents to get a "screen pop" of relevant customer information when a member calls in, making the interaction slick and efficient - just the image Virgin Active wants to project," explains Johan Landman, MD of Datatex.
EC implemented the servers, software and storage systems for the archived calls, as well as the wall boards to allow "at a glance" monitoring of key status metrics, winning the deal based on its expertise in the field and its highly competitive pricing.
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