Bell Canada Inc.’s Managed Solutions arm has joined forces with Avaya Inc. to offer an all-IP based contact centre solution that allows businesses to outsource the ownership, design, installation and management of their customer service systems.
Called the “turnkey multimedia contact centre solution,” customers can tailor the multimedia offering to fit their needs by choosing from features such as interactive voice response (IVR), fax, e-mail, Web chat and Web live voice.
“The Bell contact centre solution gives a company’s clients more options on when, how and where they are able to access customer service and help desk support,” said Charles Salameh, vice-president of Toronto-based Bell Canada’s managed solutions and data portfolio.
“Customers are provided with more convenience and choice in order to contact a company’s call centre. The tightly integrated nature of Bell’s multimedia contact centre also enables businesses to better personalize the customer service experience – whether by phone, e-mail or the Web.”
Ideally suited for enterprise customers with 35 to 300 agents, it is Bell’s first IP-based contact centre solution and it is Bell’s first contact centre solution that has fully integrated capabilities for dealing with all the multimedia features.
“Basically, it’s an all-in-one type of solution where an agent sits down,” said Hugh Pilkington, senior team leader of managed solutions at Bell Canada. “They [clients] have to provide the workstations themselves but from a contact centre application perspective and the telephony perspective, we provide all that.”
He said one of the benefits of an all-IP solution is that traffic can be consolidated onto one network. One benefit of running everything over one network is enhanced reporting abilities. Also, agents don’t have to be at the same physical location, he said.
What Avaya brings to the table is its Enterprise Class Internet Protocol Solutions (ECLIPS) and Multimedia Contact Centre Software.
“The reason we went with Avaya is because when we assessed their multimedia capabilities, we felt they had the strongest feature set in terms of integrating all the different types of media contact capabilities into a single infrastructure,” Pilkington said. “E-mail, voice mail, Web chat, fax – all those things. Avaya has a very strong application for integrating those into a single-view for the call centre manager and the agent.”
Toronto-based Millennium Care, a company that provides technical support and customer care solutions on behalf of clients such as Famous Players Inc., became the first company to establish a virtual contact centre through Bell in June.
“Bell’s turnkey contact centre solution really answered our call,” said Doug LaRose, vice-president of operations for Millennium Care. He said the fact it’s fully owned and managed by Bell helps his firm lower its total cost of delivery, and keeps it competitive within its target markets.
He said another advantage is the pricing model – per user, per month on a contracted basis, and that Millennium Care could also scale its requirements and costs as it expands its business.
“That, in the end, means our team can focus on our core business of delivering exceptional help desk services,” LaRose said.
