Business communication systems integrator Datapoint, an accredited partner of speech analytics expert Nexidia (News - Alert), has formed a five-year managed services contract with O2 (News - Alert), a pioneer in business and consumer communications.
The contract will ultimately link O2’s entire lineup of U.K. core contact centers to offer O2 customers rapid, competent service by phone and text messaging, and integrate into other communication channels, such as social media, in the future.
“O2 is investing in what is one of the largest and most complex, virtual IP contact centers in Europe as part of its vision to differentiate the customer experience,” said Jim Kent, CEO of Datapoint. “Our team has spent over 3,000 man days to implement the IP contact center, which enables O2 to be even more agile in communicating and rolling out new services to its customers.”
In addition to the implementation of a virtual contact center, Datapoint will now offer 24/7 managed services, thus ridding of any issues or holdups before they reach customers. Quarterly workshops are also being planned as part of O2’s customer contact and management strategy for the evaluation of new communication technologies for the contact center, including natural language speech recognition.
“Datapoint’s communication and customer service infrastructure will help us double the number of our customer ‘fans’ by the end of 2011 as we step up service for our customers regardless of which channel they communicate with us – whether it’s via the phone one day or Facebook (News - Alert) the other,” added Gareth Turpin, head of Strategy and Operations, Sales & Service, for O2.
Meanwhile, an open-standards based system will be monitored and managed by Datapoint’s services team to provide business continuity across two data centers. What is deemed to be one of Europe’s largest IP contact center installations, the system will integrate Nectar proactive monitoring and managed services software; Genesys’ (News - Alert) current call routing, workforce management and customer interaction management systems; Avaya’s IVR and switching; Qfiniti’s voice and data recording; HP and Sun enterprise servers; NetApp storage; and an Oracle (News - Alert) database.
With this new contract, O2 hopes to grant customers more choices with which to communicate with O2, be it SMS, social media, Web conferencing, or IM.
Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefanie Mosca