Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Aspect Helps European Golf Tourism Company Meet Multichannel Call Center Goals

February 24, 2012

Golfbreaks.com, one of Europe's leading golf tour operators, recently needed a way to broaden the multichannel capabilities of its call center. The company was pursuing a business goal of becoming the de facto supplier of golfing holidays in Europe, and as a result, it was experiencing a period of rapid and long-term growth. Its existing IT infrastructure was unable to support these business goals or provide enough flexibility to develop the way it interacts with its customers. As a result, Golfbreaks.com needed a contact center that could support its growth and help it serve customers they way they required.


“With more customers than ever booking with us, we required a way to meet the challenge without increasing headcount, and to do more with less,” said Steve Hemsworth, Managing Director at Golfbreaks.com. “Our customer service is why people keep coming back to us, but as demand increased, the lack of channel integration was putting a strain on our agents and systems, increasing administration time. Customer preferences for the way they contact us are changing, as are the times at which they choose to contact us.”

To address this issue, Golfbreaks.com chose customer contact solutions provider Aspect to integrate its customer relationship management (CRM) system, Web chat, voice calls and e-mail into one streamlined system. Collaborating with Dell, Aspect is in the process of implementing its Aspect Unified IP v7 and workforce optimization applications at Golfbreaks.com's contact center, integrated with Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, supplied by Dell.

Aspect's voice technology has already gone live at Golfbreaks.com, with CRM, Web chat, e-mail, call recording and blended interaction for agents handling multiple channels, due to go live later this summer. Working with Dell's project team on-site, Aspect says it will integrate its multimedia applications into Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, underpinned by Dell's servers and operating system. Aspect has also provided Golfbreaks.com with a software developer's kit and full training in Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, including call recording, for secure handling of customer credit card details.

“We expect to see a quick return on investment. Since we are not increasing any personnel resources there are other benefits, including reduced average call handling times, which naturally brings down the cost per interaction, especially when combined with cheaper channels such as e-mail,” said Hemsworth.

Even better news for Golfbreaks.com, the voice implementation, which was expected to take 12 weeks, was instead completed in eight-and-a-half.




Edited by Rich Steeves



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