"A couple of years ago, Spescom supplied Blake Holdings with Avaya equipment as the foundation for future expansion of the call centre," says Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion. "At the same time, Spescom DataVoice provided voice recording equipment to support the call centre.
 
"As the company anticipated, its operation has since grown significantly, increasing the number of agents to almost 1 500, handling very large call volumes for both local and overseas clients.
 
"Following a visit last year to the Spanish headquarters of our partner, Presence Technologies, Blake Holdings became very interested in acquiring the Presence solution. Early this year, Spescom installed a pilot version of the Presence dialler program, which was tested successfully, serving one of its UK-based customers. A dialler is a computerised system that automatically dials batches of telephone numbers for connection to agents assigned to sales or other campaigns. The pilot used the advanced predictive dialling algorithms that are part of the Presence solution."
 
The Presence technology offers a dialler which is cost-effective to deploy, he adds.
 
"The full Presence product is the CRM Optimiser, which has a wide range of modules, the dialler being only one component," says Fick. "After the first pilot, Blake Holdings moved on to test blended dialling for another of its clients. This allows agents to handle inbound calls, and, when they are not otherwise occupied, the system automatically routes outbound calls to them.
 
"Essentially, we have two new implementations running at the call centre, and, since both of the customers are pleased with the results, we expect to be deploying further Presence technology, as Blake Holdings also offers this solution to its other customers, he concludes.