BT Expands Cloud Contact Center With Customer Self-Service And Workforce Optimization

IRVING, Texas, Sept. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- BT today announced an expanded set of cloud-based contact center capabilities for the U.S. market, designed to provide global organizations with an integrated offering for all their contact center needs, including advanced performance analytics, workforce optimization (WFO), multi-channel capabilities and customer self-service options.

Contact centers are often the frontlines of customer service for businesses today, yet many companies fall short when it comes to delivering a superior customer experience. For example, according to recent research[1] by BT and Avaya, an alarming 83 percent of consumers say the lines are busy when they call a contact center. This lack of availability, convenience and self-service options to handle call volumes can mean the difference between keeping and losing a customer. In fact, one in three consumers say convenience is more important than price. And, the research shows that more than 80 percent of U.S. customers buy more from companies that make it easier for them to do business.

Bas Burger, president of US and Canada for BT Global Services said: "Today, customers expect instant access to information and resources to solve their issues, regardless of the contact method they choose. Cloud-based solutions may provide the answer for companies struggling to address rising customer expectations while also lowering costs. This is why BT has made significant investments in building out a full set of solutions for all contact center needs in the cloud."

With an integrated approach to address contact center needs, BT's Cloud Contact solutions allow businesses to easily scale based on demand, take advantage of the latest technologies without expensive upfront investments and connect remote contact center agents in an easy, cost-effective way. Customers can now significantly divert traffic away from the contact center and reduce costs to as little as 35 cents per transaction with BT's self-service capabilities. Additionally, companies can improve efficiency and performance by leveraging advanced WFO tools for their existing contact center from $40 per user per month. 

Previously, most cloud-based providers couldn't offer solutions for all the components of a call center. This forced organizations to rely on multiple vendors to get the tools they needed to be successful. Cloud-based WFO and multi-channel self-service are the final pieces in the cloud contact center puzzle. With our full suite of cloud-based solutions, organizations of all sizes can now access the right tools to manage operations and provide a world-class customer experience.

BT's solutions enable organizations to fully benefit from a globally dispersed or mobile, remote workforce – allowing agents to work from anywhere, at any time. In fact, Tesco, one of the world's largest retailers, is using BT's Cloud Contact solution to virtualize its contact center services and give customers an enhanced, more flexible and more responsive contact center experience. The solution provides more than 200 home workers with an effective contact center environment and it enables calls to be directed efficiently and to the most appropriate agent with the skills to assist the caller.

Key services now available in the U.S. include:

• BT Optimize Contact: a suite of optimization tools that help organizations improve efficiencies by giving them deeper insights into operations, including staffing and service levels, customer interaction voice recordings and speech analytics. Customer service agents typically account for the largest percentage of contact center costs, creating a greater need for WFO solutions to make sure agent resources are leveraged appropriately to maximize performance. With technology from Verint, BT is able to provide a unified view of customer interactions and service levels to enable better decisions about workforce optimization and management.
• BT Cloud Contact Cisco: a cloud-based IP contact center service based on Cisco's Unified Contact Center technology. It is a fully functional multi-channel contact center solution designed to complement an organization's existing IP telephony service. It enables agents to work from any location and to handle multi-channel contacts from across the globe, optimizing resources without the overhead of managing and maintaining physical infrastructure 24/7.
• BT Auto Contact: an automated system that frees up agents to focus on more complex and revenue-generating calls by empowering customers with more choices to solve issues. Leveraging Voxeo's Prophecy and CXP technologies, BT Auto Contact helps improve the overall customer experience with enhanced self-service options for customers, including mobile and online options, and has the potential to reduce contact center agent costs by up to 90 percent.

BT's Cloud platforms already deliver more than six million voice calls and 500,000 messages and chats in an average month with agents spread across 40 countries. For more information, please visit: http://www.globalservices.bt.com/us/en/products/cloud_contact

About BT
BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

In the year ended 31 March 2013, BT Group's revenue was £18,017m with profit before taxation of £2,501m.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com

[1] Davies Hickman Partners, independent research analysts, carried out the research on behalf of BT and Avaya. The source material was provided through an online survey of 1,000 consumers, with 500 based in the US and 500 in the UK. Age and sex profiles were evenly distributed across the survey to create a representative sample of the population in both countries.

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SOURCE BT