Genesys Workforce Management solution spells success for beCogent

  • Leading provider of outsourced contact centre services wins Genesys Service Excellence Award

WOKINGHAM – 11 August 2004 – Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., a subsidiary of Alcatel (NYSE: ALA, Paris: CGEP.PA), today announced that beCogent has improved its overall business performance by 12 per cent after implementing Genesys Workforce Management. beCogent is a European pioneer of outsourced multimedia contact centre services for both inbound and outbound operations, and the performance optimisation of its 1,200 contact centre agents is key to the company’s ongoing success. Integrating Genesys Workforce Management technology into the company’s operations has already made a significant bottom line impact, and beCogent anticipates greater productivity improvements as it further leverages the solution.

With such a clear business performance improvement, beCogent was nominated for, and won, one of the prestigious Genesys Service Excellence Awards presented at the company’s recent annual user conference, G-Force 2004, in New York. The awards acknowledge exceptional performance in customer service, and beCogent was honoured for ‘Best Use of Technology to Improve Agent Satisfaction’. Working with Genesys Workforce Management provides beCogent with all the essential planning, forecasting, scheduling and analysis tools needed to match agent performance with the company’s key business objectives. The solution also directly addresses the challenges of agent variables and customer segmentation, which are two of beCogent’s main concerns.

"With over 1,200 agents, and a turnover approaching £20 million, beCogent runs a major outsourced contact centre operation. At any given time we may have upwards of 40 different shifts to staff, and we’re finding that our customer needs are becoming more and more complex," commented Ron Peerenboom, beCogent’s CEO. "With the increasing adoption of multimedia and blended services, it became clear that this challenge wasn’t going to go away. We invested in Genesys Workforce Management technology to help address some of our key operational and business issues. Since implementing the software solution, we’ve been able to create and operate more cost-effective shift patterns while ensuring we’ve got the right number of agents in place. This has made a real difference to our business, and we’ve already succeeded in improving our overall business performance by 12 per cent.

"Before implementing Genesys Workforce Management, we typically relied on spreadsheets which were generally inflexible and didn’t give us the control we needed – particularly in terms of scheduling and staff planning," continued Ron. "By adopting a more comprehensive workforce management approach we’ve seen a significant increase in our agent satisfaction, and our team managers can now schedule with confidence as they no longer have to estimate interaction volumes. An additional benefit is that we can also carry out advanced scheduling against demand functionality, helping us flag any staffing issues very early on."

"The annual Genesys Service Excellence Awards are global in their scope, so I’m delighted that one of our major UK customers has secured such a prestigious acknowledgement," added Mark Turner, Genesys Telecommunications’ Vice President for UK and Ireland. "beCogent has a track record as an acknowledged innovator, first with its support for multiple communication channels through its beAssisted blended service solution and now with one of the industry’s most impressive Workforce Management implementations. Genesys technology clearly plays a key role in beCogent’s continued success, and we look forward to developing the relationship going forward."

Genesys Workforce Management supports the most complex contact centre environments, and provides the planning, forecasting, scheduling and analysis tools organisations need to align their agent workforce strategy with their most critical business objectives. Workforce Management integrates tightly with the Genesys Framework so companies can leverage existing investments in Genesys contact centre infrastructure, saving costs and cutting implementation times. Genesys Workforce Management supports both multimedia and multi-skill environments across multiple sites, making it an ideal solution to create optimal schedules for multi-skilled agents who handle customer interactions of different media types. Genesys Workforce Management also supports a contact centre manager’s ability to optimise agent management for customers that require both e-mail and Web-based transactions, as well as traditional voice calls.

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., a subsidiary of Alcatel, is 100 per cent focused on software for call centres. Genesys recognises that better interactions drive better business and build company reputations. Customer service solutions from Genesys deliver on this promise for Global 2000 enterprises, government organisations and telecommunications service providers across 80 countries, directing more than 100 million customer interactions every day. Sophisticated routing and reporting across voice, e-mail and Web channels ensure that customers are quickly connected to the best available resource - the first time. Genesys offers solutions for customer service, help desks, order desks, collections, outbound telesales and service, and workforce management. Visit www.genesyslab.com for more information.

Media Contact: -
Paul Roberts, Genesys, 0118 974 7000, proberts@genesyslab.co.uk
Jennifer Duff, beCogent, 01236 628089, jennifer.duff@beCogent.com