All-in-one contact centre solution for SA
Ninzi-Connect Software (formerly Multi-Connect) was
one of the first suppliers of Automatic Call
Distribution (ACD) equipment to the South African
market, when the company was originally established in
1989. This was followed up by introducing the workforce
management product now known as eWFM (originally TCS) to
the marketplace.
At the time, ACD was a business tool that took the
market by storm and it has since matured into the
advanced Customer Contact Centres that we know today. MD
Howard Haines had the vision to realise that the contact
centre industry in SA was a growing one, and along with
ACD, added an outbound dialler and a call logging
solution, to the organisation’s arsenal, in order to be
able to offer clients a total package. "We have now come
full circle from our early days, as an "island of
technology" supplier - to our newest offering, Ensemble
Pro, which is an all encompassing solution that provides
both single site and enterprise level functionality and
effectively combines ACD, outbound, recording and
multi-media communications into a single reliable and
scalable package," he says.
"The evolution from ACD to Ensemble Pro in some ways
mirrors Ninzi-Connect’s evolution from its humble
beginnings as Multi-Connect, through 18 years of contact
centre implementations, into an experienced and fully
BEE-compliant solutions provider."
According to Ninzi-Connect account manager Nic
Loizides, the company’s Ensemble Pro provides both
inbound and outbound dialling, as well as interactive
voice response (IVR) technology, full recording and
application service-providing functionality which will
provide a total solution for an in-house contact centre
or BPO-focused organisation.
"Buying a unified product such as this benefits these
companies as they no longer have to purchase a number of
disparate products to make an entire solution," he says.
"This is our flagship product, as it encompasses all
that is needed in a contact centre, and by its nature it
opens up a whole new marketplace for the company,
because it allows us to play in the mid-range space as
well as at the enterprise level."
He says that Ensemble Pro is the key differentiator
for Ninzi-Connect, as it provides the type of all-in-one
solution that the mid-size organisation requires, adding
that to purchase the different offerings found within
this product on a piecemeal basis would in all
likelihood be far too expensive for such a business.
"A lot of smaller organisations have budget
constraints and it would cost an arm and a leg to buy
all the products individually, but because our solution
is a unified one, it is much cheaper and is also the
type of product that can grow with an organisation as
its business grows."
He says a perfect example of a mid-range
implementation is that which was done for
Norton-Lambrianos Attorneys, a law firm that specialises
in the area of debt collection for a number of major
retailers and similar corporations.
"Since the nature of their business involves a lot of
telephone work, the company decided to invest in its own
call centre as it was of the opinion that in order to
offer a better service to its clients, it needed a tool
that could assist it with the collection process," says
Loizides. "Ensemble Pro proved to be the right product
at the right time for them, since it offered the kind of
functionality they were seeking within the correct price
range. Also, the Norton - Lambrianos MD had previous
experience with our Davox predictive diallers, which is
why he turned to us in the first place."
Norton-Lambrianos MD, Dave Fisher, says that his
organisation had recently acquired a large retailer as a
client, and the volumes of collections had become quite
high. Thanks to his previous good experiences with Davox
and Ninzi-Connect’s service, he approached the company
with regards to implementing something that could handle
high volumes and a complex, blended contact centre
environment.
"The installation was well planned beforehand and it
went very smoothly. This was because we set out a
timeline to work to and stuck to it. Also all the work
was done offsite first, so everything was ready by the
time we came to install the offering at our offices,"
says Fisher.
"The key to making this implementation a success from
our side lay in understanding the newer functionality
and this meant that training our staff and getting them
used to using the product was critical, so training was
conducted beforehand both for normal staff and for our
supervisors."
Loizides says that Norton-Lambrianos now also has the
option to record calls - both for legal purposes and for
quality control - as this is built into the product
functionality and that as their requirements grow so
more functionality can be switched on too.
"The real challenge for us was the fact that this was
one of our first Ensemble Pro implementations, so it was
a case of accurately determining the most efficient call
flows to meet the customer requirements, which could
nonetheless be altered on the fly as the requirements
themselves changed."
He insists, however, that because Ninzi-Connect had
been performing similar sorts of implementations for
quite a long time, the business already had the
experience within it that was necessary to make the
operation flow smoothly.
"It was certainly trickier in some respects, because
it is an end-to-end solution, rather than the individual
solutions we had been offering before, but then it was
also easier in some ways because of this," states
Loizides.
"We had Norton-Lambrianos up and running within three
months - from the time we placed the order for the
equipment through to going live with it - which is quite
a remarkable turn around time for a full contact centre
implementation," he says, pointing out that a lot of the
installed equipment was shipped in from overseas, and
that had it not been for the lead time on this, the
project could have been completed in as little as six
weeks.
Fisher says that as far as his company is concerned,
the solution has done exactly what it was meant to,
which is to improve agent productivity in order to
facilitate more collections for the corporations
Norton-Lambrianos works for.
"From a quality point of view, we also have a voice
recording option, which means that we can manage our
agents properly, gather accurate statistics such as how
many calls are made, how many real connects occur and so
on," he says. "The solution has also become a good
marketing tool for our business, as most of the large
retailers and financial institutions are keen on
partners who have this type of technology, so Ensemble
Pro gives us a competitive edge in the market."
Asked about the future for Ninzi-Connect, Loizides
says that he sees Ensemble Pro playing a role in driving
SA forward as an outsource contact centre destination,
particularly as it is a solution that offers
best-of-breed, all-in-one functionality. "This is
because Ensemble Pro allows customers to utilise an ASP
model to support multiple independent contact centres
off a single implementation."
"Whilst the product is undoubtedly world class, it is
also vital that the correct expertise is utilised in the
implementation process, and this is where Ninzi’s more
than 18 years of experience in the field comes to the
fore, ensuring an implementation that will exactly fit
the client’s needs and requirements," he adds.
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