Celebratory drink for Interactive Intelligence, CallTime win

Gordon Peters
Tuesday, 16 November 2010 23:32

IT Industry - Tenders

Australia's largest direct wine retailer, Cellarmasters, is to deploy the Interactive Intelligence, all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center (CIC), at its new contact centre in the inner-Sydney suburb of Surry Hills.

Interactive Intelligence Elite partner, CallTime Solutions, won the competitive tender to deploy the CIC next-generation telephony platform, which Interactive Intelligence says will support growing sales and enhance service to more than 360,000 Cellarmasters customers.

Cellarmasters Group head of IT, Cameron Brawn, said the SIP-based CIC solution will provide Cellarmasters' new 200 seat contact centre, and the organisation's 100 business users, with functionality for IP PBX, automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, unified messaging, desktop faxing, softphone, presence management, multi-channel recording and blended dialling.  It replaces the organisation's legacy PBX, ACD, call recording and dialler systems.

'We selected Interactive Intelligence on account of CIC's excellent Windows user interface, its high level of compliance with our documented requirements and the fact that it only uses a small number of servers.  We looked at six solutions in total but Interactive Intelligence was very attractive in terms of its simplicity, ease of use and its small IT footprint,' Brawn said.

'Not only is Interactive Intelligence in the Gartner Magic Quadrant but we also received good references on CallTime Solutions and this gives us strong comfort that they will do an excellent job in implementing the solution at our new contact centre.'

Initially, CIC will provide support for email customer response, inbound calls and outbound sales to existing customers.  The organisation will be able to monitor call time queues, effectively manage emails from point of contact into an in-house developed CRM platform and provide priority routing for loyalty program customers.  Efficient call routing will also enable customers to speak to their personal wine advisor. 

'The fact that with CIC our PABX can be hosted off site means that we don't need to have a dedicated computer room in our new contact centre.  All features that we require are integrated within the Interactive Intelligence software and it also provides for disaster recovery.  As CIC's technology footprint is so small the system is easy to duplicate,' says Brawn.

According to Brawn, Interactive Intelligence's "thin" client strategy will enable the organisation to more quickly and easily deploy its software for new distributed users by reducing bandwidth requirements and eliminating the need to install software at each desktop.

'CIC includes rich functionality designed for more flexible and efficient communications, such as the ability to configure information views for faster look-ups; enhanced alerts to more easily identify incoming calls; the ability to configure personal rules for specialist call-handling; and a personal rules wizard that simplifies customisation.

We are passionate about providing our customers with an exceptional personal service experience. The Interactive Intelligence system will ultimately enable us to effectively communicate with our 360,000 customers via whichever touch-point they choose - telephone, email, Web chat, and SMS.  We will also be able to seamlessly include emerging methods such as social networking,' Brawn said.

Cellarmasters, which opened for business in 1982, says it sells over a million cases of wine each year. 

Deployment of the Interactive Intelligence solution has just commenced in a phased rollout and will be completed in early 2011 when Cellarmasters moves its operations from Bondi Junction to Surry Hills.