BT Contact: Customer Service Fit For The "Omnichannel Generation"

IRVING, Texas, Jan. 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- BT today announced innovative new capabilities for its BT Contact portfolio, designed to make organizations easier to do business with, while removing costs and complexity from their contact center operations and enabling "omnichannel" customer service.

Those innovations, including the latest evolution of BT's cloud-based contact center solutions, will help organizations keep ahead of trends in "omnichannel" customer service -- customer service delivered over multiple channels but connected together within the organization to provide a seamless customer experience, regardless of channel used. The growth in omnichannel service has been driven by demand for simpler and more consistent interactions via online, social media and video channels.

The innovations to the BT Contact portfolio include technologies from BT's key partners and also feature products and services optimized for mid-market organizations with contact centers of between 100-1000 seats -- the fastest growing contact center market. The BT Contact solutions are designed to provide the same sophistication as large contact center deployments but packaged in a way to avoid expensive bespoke developments.

The updated BT Contact portfolio now includes:

    --  BT Inbound Contact: harnessing the reach and reliability of BT's global
        voice network and employing its intelligence to route and queue calls
        all around the world. BT Inbound Contact allows organizations to provide
        a uniform service across all contact centers, providing callers,
        regardless of geographical location, with the same range of access
        numbers and routing plans. This helps international organizations
        present themselves as local operators and allows them to connect
        customers and agents across multiple contact centers, minimizing the
        need for investments in call routing technologies.  As part of the
        enhancements announced today, BT Inbound Contact is being rolled out to
        eight new countries throughout the next 12 months including Chile,
        Colombia, Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Romania
        offering organizations cost savings on average of 30% by avoiding the
        use for international numbers, which incur higher access charges for
        organizations and are more expensive for customers to call.
    --  BT Auto Contact is an automated system that allows customers to use
        self-service technology to deal with simple, routine queries in a
        convenient manner. It allows organizations to focus resources on
        managing more complex customer enquiries, offering cost savings in
        agents' time of up to 90 per cent.  BT is expanding its cloud-based self
        service solutions to the US and Latin America, in addition to existing
        capabilities in Europe and Asia-Pacific.
    --  BT Cloud Contact enables agents to work from any location, meaning
        experts are available 'on demand' regardless of where or how the
        customer enquiry is made.  Customers get consistently higher service and
        enterprises can make the most of the skills and expertise spread
        throughout their organization. BT Cloud Contact's technology allows
        organizations to flex capacity in line with operational needs and is
        available as a "pay-as-you-go" service. BT Cloud Contact will benefit
        from new features such as "desktop connectors", allowing organizations
        to incorporate more information on agents' desktop to help better serve
        customers.  BT is also introducing Cisco SocialMiner to provide social
        media tools for agents using BT Cloud Contact.  This allows cloud-based
        scanning and monitoring of social media networks, incorporating those
        into normal contact center operations to help provide a fully
        omnichannel experience. Relevant social media posts can then be
        presented to agents as a live feed which they can then choose to action.
    --  BT Onsite Contact: building on the success of BT Cloud Contact, BT
        Onsite contact has been enhanced for mid-market organizations, allowing
        for transparent capture and routing of customer requests, regardless of
        channel of contact.
    --  BT Optimize Contact: launched as a cloud service from £30 per user per
        month, BT Optimize Contact is a suite of optimization tools that gives
        deeper insight into contact center operations, from who is making
        contact, when and how,  to staffing and service levels, helping
        organizations maximize efficiencies and improve customer service.  This
        new BT capability is being delivered in a way that allows organizations
        to flex up and down in line with operational needs.

Andrew Small, Vice President BT Contact in BT Global Services, said: "BT Contact continues to innovate, helping organizations create an 'omnichannel' approach to customer service. Our latest enhancements to the portfolio empower organizations of all sizes to provide world-class care to their customers. It gives agents a much broader access to the information needed to manage customers' interactions regardless of channel used. And it provides organizations with the ability to add new communication channels without significantly increasing complexity or cost.

"BT manages 10 billion minutes per year of inbound voice calls to our enterprise customers' contact centers. We understand voice; we understand contact centers and we're enabling new online channels such as social media. This makes us the partner of choice to help organizations deliver an outstanding omnichannel customer experience."

The BT Contact portfolio harnesses the latest technologies from Cisco, Avaya and Genesys and is complemented by BT Advise Contact: a consultancy service drawing on BT's strong design and integration skills with experience across multiple vendors, multiple channels and multiple technologies.

Details on the BT Contact portfolio are available at www.bt.com/btcontact

About BT
BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

In the year ended 31 March 2012, BT Group's revenue was £18,897m with profit before taxation of £2,445m.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com.

SOURCE BT