Genesys Express

IP Contact Center
Case Study - Compilation

"The Genesys solution is vital to our multichannel customer service strategy and it
comprehensively suits our needs. Genesys
Express IP Contact Center is costeffective and its open platform allows us
to be more flexible in the future."
Kari Wilen,
Director Customer Care,
Fennia

"We chose Genesys Express because, first

of all, we are a Genesys Systems
Integrator and knew about its scalability,
flexibility and reliability. Secondly, and
even more importantly, we made the
decision because it's the perfect solution
for the Gioiatech business."
Fabiano Pinto,
Genesys Practice Manager,
Lutech SpA

FENNIA GROUP,
FINLAND

"We get more calls and deal with them more

quickly than before - about 20% faster. Even
though the total number of agents has
increased, we have the same number dealing
with inbound. So the fact that we can take
more calls and handle them more quickly is
down to Genesys."
Kari Wilen,
Director Customer Care,
Fennia

The Fennia Group - comprising Fennia, Pension

Fennia and Fennia Life - was established in 1998,
although the name and associated insurance activities date back to the 19th century.The group has
60 offices across Finland, offering non-life, pension
and life insurance services.
The national contact center provides insurance information services and support to this network.
There are 60 IP agents in total, split across two
sites that operate as a single, virtual center.There
are 40 agents at Vaasa and 20 in Helsinki, skilled in
dealing with either business clients or consumers.
Twenty of the sixty agents are dedicated to
outbound calls while the rest give advice, deal
with billing inquiries, open new policies for
customers or change existing ones.They are also
responsible for selling more insurance to existing
customers.
Before Genesys was installed, Fennia used IBM
CallPath on an Ericsson PBX, but this was inflexible and didn't provide a skills-based routing
facility. Kari Wilen, Director of Customer Care at
Fennia, explains: "The old system was difficult to
use - it just wasn't intuitive.The software and
telephone hardware were separated and the system
couldn't be integrated with our existing desktop
solution. It had limited reporting and monitoring
capabilities, so we didn't have the metrics we
needed to improve.We had to make a change and
we needed to get quick results."
Fennia evaluated practically all of the systems on
offer from the established players in the market,
choosing Genesys Express IP contact center
ahead of the others. As well as being fast to
implement, the new system fit into the company's
customer service strategy, as Wilen explains: "The
Genesys solution is vital to our multi-channel
customer service strategy and it comprehensively
suits our needs.We have physical locations - our
branches - and a Web-based service, so multichannel makes sense.The contact center is
becoming the most important channel, over and
above the offices, so Genesys is very important. It
facilitates this change in emphasis."
Wilen says: "The open platform of Genesys gives
us flexibility between traditional telephony systems
and VoIP.We've been able to build an environment
where we can avoid using an expensive voice-card
through the switch and CTI link. So, Genesys
Express IP Contact Center, relying on Genesys IP
Media eXchange (IPMX), an IP media switch
specifically for the contact center, is cost-effective
and its open platform allows us to be more
flexible in the future.
What's more, we may introduce a new CRM
soon and the infrastructure independence means
we're not restricted in our choices. Also, we've got
the opportunity for a distributed contact center
based on IP technology.This might allow us to
offer an improved, faster service to our most
important customers, for example."

Day-to-day flexibility was also a key factor in the

decision, as Wilen explains: "Genesys makes it very
easy to apply or change the business rules associated with the skill-sets.With the previous system,
this was a complicated operation. Every time a
change was needed, the supervisors had to call for
technical assistance, whereas now they can do it
themselves."
The implementation was done in one phase by
IBM Global Services, Fennia's long-standing IT
partner that also recommended Genesys.The new
solution also uses a Cisco media gateway behind
an Ericsson MD110, as well as a custom softphone
integrated to a Custom CRM desktop.
Fennia are still using their PBX and just deployed
Genesys IP Media eXchange option with the
Express Voice software package.With this configuration, all inbound calls are routed through the
PBX connected to a Cisco media gateway (using
the QSIG protocol) to Genesys IP Media
eXchange (and Genesys Express for routing instructions) and then the calls are sent back to the
PBX phones through the same media gateway.
The IP agent workstation consists of a regular
digital Ericsson phone set with a headset along
with a home-grown softphone based on H.323
protocol.
The Genesys solution allows the agents to handle
approximately 25,000 calls per month, compared
to 18,000 before the implementation: a 40%
increase.
"The agents are very happy with the solution,"
asserts Wilen. "The functionality of the new
system makes the agents' work easier to do.With
the old solution, the telephone system was separate
from the software applications holding the customer data. Now the two things are integrated, so
once the agent starts the softphone, everything is
running."
Wilen believes that the company has better
control of customer service too. He says: "We get
more calls and deal with them more quickly than
before - about 20% faster. Even though the total
number of agents has increased, we have the same
number dealing with inbound. So the fact that we
can take more calls and handle them more quickly
is down to Genesys."
In the future,Wilen expects Fennia to take
advantage of the flexibility of Express IP Contact
Center by adding remote agents to the service. He
explains: "Express IP Contact Center makes it easy
to establish communication with remote agents,
which may be a direction we explore.We also
want to implement new service channels, like
e-mail and Web, and outbound too. Genesys can
help us to do all this."

GIOIATECH SpA,
ITALY
"We've had a very positive response from
all the operators and managers working
within the contact center - mainly because
of the reduction in the average call time
[now down to 5 minutes] and the improvement in the quality of the response we can
give to clients."
Fabiano Pinto,
Genesys Practice Manager,
Lutech SpA

Gioiatech SpA is a subsidiary of Lutech, an

Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) professional services company with a
turnover of about 70 million Euro in 2003.
Gioiatech offers its clients - telecom operators,
banks and other financial institutions, plus industrial manufacturing companies - a variety of ICT
services.These range from technical assistance and
systems maintenance through to hosted application services, a Network Operating Center and
outsourcing.
Gioiatech represents a completely new business
model for Lutech, since the provision and support
of these services revolves around two contact
centers.
Lutech needed a completely new system of
support for its consultants and operators, as well as
a solution that would offer more organized and
qualified services to its customers.The decision
was therefore made to modernize the old call
center and build a further contact center splitting the services between the two locations.
Today, the new call center, represented by
Gioiatech and based in Gioia del Colle (near Bari,
in the south of Italy), uses freshly-recruited
resources and is dedicated to 'first level' service
calls.The other - located in the north, at Lutech
offices in Brescia - is staffed by the longer-serving
agents and handles 'second level' calls, which are
more technical in nature.Thanks to the deployment of Genesys Express, the 12 agents in the
south are able to handle 200,000 calls per year.
Customers can make contact via fax and e-mail, as
well as the phone.This facility for dealing with a
greater volume of calls, plus the solution's multichannel flexibility, were just two of the reasons for
Gioiatech choosing Genesys.
Fabiano Pinto, Genesys Practice Manager at
Lutech SpA explains: "We chose Genesys Express
because, first of all, we are a Genesys Systems
Integrator and knew about its scalability, flexibility
and reliability.We've built up a lot of knowledge
internally about Genesys and many of our
customers who use it are very pleased, so it makes
sense for us to have it too! It means we have our
own Genesys reference site within the company,
which can help reassure clients. Secondly, and even
more importantly, we made the decision because
it's the perfect solution for the Gioiatech
business."
Gioiatech evaluated other solutions too, of course,
but these systems were not appropriate for the size
of the company's operation. As Pinto says: "We
didn't need the full Genesys Enterprise Routing
solution. Genesys Express reflects the relatively
small scale of our customer service operation

today and also gives us scope to expand in the

future, or else migrate to another Genesys
solution."
Gioiatech is currently using Genesys Express IP
Contact Center with the IP Media eXchange
option for the management of calls, with a Cisco
media gateway for the transformation of phone
calls from TDM to IP. All services are managed
through the Genesys platform, which helps to
reduce costs.
The solution was developed within the Practice
Genesys Group in Lutech, as Pinto explains: "We
developed and then tested the solution using just
two operators.We offered a limited service to one
of our banking clients and, once it had proved
successful, we made the move south.Then we
switched more clients from the north, at a rate of
ten every two weeks, until there were 40 in total
using Gioia del Colle."
Ten extra agents, who had been trained in Brescia,
were also employed in Bari and everyone has
adjusted well to the new system. Pinto says:
"We've had a very positive response from all the
operators and managers working within the
contact center - mainly because of the reduction
in the average call time [now down to 5 minutes]
and the improvement in the quality of the
response we can give to clients. On average we
now answer 80% of the calls within ten seconds.
The abandon rate is just over 3% and first call resolution is averaging 60%."
The solution has also proved useful in terms of
improving call management. Pinto continues:
"We're finding the record-keeping facilities very
helpful.The first level agents can check the issueresolution database much more easily and quickly
than before, to see if they've already answered the
same question on a previous call. And the call
center managers appreciate the solution for the
support it offers in monitoring calls."
The next step for Gioiatech is to connect the two
contact centers together via an IP line to create a
virtual center, making the transition from first to
second level contact even smoother.The company
would also like to increase the contact channels
available, as Pinto concludes: "Lutech has about
400 employees working off-site and they currently
use the call centers for support.We'd like to
transfer these transactions to the internet/intranet
and free up the voice lines for customers.Taking
advantage of the Genesys Express multimedia
channels like this would improve the service and
help us to reduce costs."

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