Macquarie Telecom to insource contact centres in 2010

By Beverley Head
Wednesday, 18 November 2009 02:52

IT Industry - Market

In a bid to differentiate itself through improved customer service Macquarie Telecom will bring its contact centre operations in-house by April 2010.

Stuart McDonald, group executive for business improvement and revenue assurance, said that the new centre will be managed by Simon Gatward, who has been appointed group executive of telecommunication services. At present Macquarie runs outsourced contact centres, which will gradually be brought in-house.

The company is hiring a team of contact centre staff, who will be based in Sydney. “We plan to begin in April 2010.” A staff of around 30 is currently planned for the contact centre according to McDonald.

“We believe customer service has to be a differentiator,” said McDonald who added that until now “the bar has been set low.” By bringing the contact centre in house the company hopes to deliver a service that is “recognised in the industry as the best in class.”

Earlier this week IP communications supplier Interactive Intelligence announced that it had edged out six other vendors to secure the 25 seat call management deal from Macquarie Telecom. It also said that it believed this would eventually grow to a 500 seat deal.

McDonald told iTWire that while Interactive Intelligence was the preferred option, contract negotiations were continuing and a final deal had yet to be locked down. He also denied that Macquarie Telecom had any plans to grow the contact centre to a 500 seat operation.

Brendan Maree, country manager for Interactive Intelligence in Australia and New Zealand, earlier this week said that there had been seven suppliers bidding for the contract, guessing that Cisco was the other company which made it to the final cut along with Interactive Intelligence. Maree explained that the company worked with its reseller partner CallTime Solutions on the bid.

Marree said the deal would be worth around $250,000 and would involve taking Macquarie’s in house call management system and feeding it into Interactive’s Automatic Call Distributor.