FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 02 September, 2003
Melbourne, Australia – Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of communications networks and services for businesses, today announced that BUPA Australia Health Insurance has chosen a range of Avaya telephony and contact centre solutions for its contact centre located in Melbourne. The A$800,000 deal was sold and will be implemented by Avaya Gold BusinessPartner Touchbase, and will provide increased functionality for staff and faster, more efficient service to customers.
For BUPA Australia Health, the planned move to new premises meant it needed entirely new telephony and IT systems. The company chose Avaya Business Advocate to intelligently select a contact centre agent’s next interaction based on objectives previously defined by BUPA Australia Health, as well as the Avaya S8700 Media Server to support distributed IP networking across its network and centralised call processing across multi-protocol networks. The company’s contact centre houses up to 150 agents and handles calls from all over Australia.
BUPA Australia Health, which is responsible for the health insurance interests of nearly one million Australians, also has plans to implement IP telephony across its branch network. These plans include connection of its South Australian head office via IP telephony to provide an effective disaster recovery solution, savings on call costs and support for call centre agents.
When capacity at the contact centre is exceeded, IP telephony also will enable BUPA Australia Health, to engage additional multi-skilled agents via IP telephony from BUPA Australia and other BUPA centres around the world, creating a virtual contact centre. BUPA Australia Health also evaluated Avaya Interaction Centre, and plans to implement the solution to provide multimedia capability, with web and email interactions for customers.
“Avaya’s ability to provide a solution that allows us to mix traditional and IP telephony, as well as giving us a roadmap for multimedia contact management with short term ROI, were important factors in our decision,” said Julian Butler, network systems manager, BUPA Australia Health. “This solution was the best fit with our business needs and the ability to network in additional agents when needed will give us great flexibility.”
BUPA customers also will benefit from skills-based routing which distributes incoming calls to the most appropriately skilled agent. If the most appropriate agent is not available, Avaya Business Advocate evaluates the predicted wait time and either sends the call to the next agent, or places it on hold for that agent.
“Prior to implementing this solution we couldn’t evaluate wait time and were allocating calls in a very rudimentary fashion. The Avaya solution has enabled us to drastically improve the service we provide to customers,” Butler said.
“Touchbase is committed to delivering solutions that provide the best results for our customers, and the best fit for their business,” said Simon Payne, general manager, Touchbase Australia. “With this new contact centre solution, BUPA Australia Health will be able to realise cost savings across its call centre.”
Sunny Rao, general manager, Enterprise Solutions, Avaya Australia said the new contact centre solution and telephony infrastructure being implemented by BUPA Australia Health will help ensure the company’s communications capability is flexible enough to cope with future changes.
“Avaya’s portfolio of solutions enables the combination of both traditional and IP telephony which allows businesses to find the balance that suits them. The contact centre solution being implemented by BUPA Australia Health also provides reduced call times, call abandons and call backs for agents. This will result in overall improvements in staff productivity as well as the level of service extended to customers,” Rao said.
About Avaya
Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than 1 million businesses worldwide, including 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500®. Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems and communications software applications and services.
Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications – and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services –Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya website: http://www.avaya.com
About Touchbase
Touchbase is a global technology services company specialising in Customer Interaction Management and Converged Communication Networks. We work with clients to drive tangible and measurable business improvement through technology utilisation. Whether a business needs to reduce costs, increase productivity, retain and develop customers or expand market share, our technology solutions are focused on return. In tandem with this, our global coverage, consistent proposition, proven methodologies and unique attitude all contribute to ensuring an exceptional client experience. Touchbase is an alliance partner with Computer Associates and a coveted Gold Business Partner with world leading manufacturer Avaya. Touchbase works with over 600 clients - including 45% of the largest global organisations (Business Week, 2002) - to help them to drive greater value from technology investment. Since foundation in 1992, Touchbase has grown exponentially, and now has 19 fully functional operations across Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.
For more information about Touchbase, visit www.touchbasegroup.com
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