NextiraOne recognises innovation in all areas of the Contact Centre

Paris, 10 May, 2010 - NextiraOne, Europe’s leading expert in communications services, has announced the winners of its Contact Centre Customer Innovation Awards for 2010.  The awards, now in their fourth year, are presented in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent and Genesys and allow NextiraOne to recognise some of their most innovative customers and encourage the sharing of ideas and best practice in Contact Centre implementations across Europe.

The winners demonstrate the wide variety of contact centre solutions and applications NextiraOne has helped to deploy and the enormous range of creativity and innovation shown by the company’s customers. Four of this year’s six winners are from Central and Eastern Europe, indicating the strength of NextiraOne’s presence in this region.

Presented at a prestigious dinner that coincided with the Genesys G-Force Contact Centre conference in Amsterdam, the awards this year went to: CEZ and CSOB in the Czech Republic, PTC in Poland and Raiffeisen Bank in Hungary, plus Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water in the UK and a major French financial institution.

CEZ Group is one of the ten largest energy companies in Europe, both in terms of installed capacity and number of customers. CEZ Zakaznicke sluby, s.r.o., is one of the new process-based companies established within CEZ Group. It was founded as a limited company based in Pilsen and has been fully operational since January 2005. CEZ Zakaznicke sluzby, s.r.o. receives the award for its highly innovative multi-channel, multi-media contact centre which uses a unique e-mail routing application based on the prioritisation of customers and which also supports offline communications.

ČSOB Bank, Czech Republic:  ČSOB is a leading player in the Czech financial services industry and part of the international banking and assurance group KBC. A long term customer of NextiraOne, CSOB has been innovative in the early adoption of new technologies and is the first customer in the region to implement Virtual Hold Technology (VHT) which allows dynamic queue management, diverting customers to alternatives such as call-back and IVR in order to reduce waiting times and improve customer satisfaction.

Polish mobile operator Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa Sp. z o.o. (PTC) is part of the T-Mobile Group and has more than 5,500 employees and around 13.5 million customers. The company has been recognised for the innovative way it has engaged with both Genesys and NextiraOne at all levels of the organisation. Its open approach to new technologies has led to early adoption of the most innovative Genesys solutions bringing early benefit to customers.

Hungary’s Raiffeisen Bank, Hungary has 350 agents working in a contact centre infrastructure that combines reactive customer service with a highly sophisticated outbound campaign environment for activities such as collections.

Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water has just taken delivery of an advanced contact centre solution that will deliver enhanced customer service for their two main contact centres and supporting back office functions - which together handle over 1.2 million customer calls each year. The contact centre solution will operate from their new offices in St Mellons, Cardiff, in the autumn of this year. Key to the success of the project is the integration of several key applications and a unique services approach that have seen NextiraOne and Welsh Water working together to develop a series of robust test scenarios with simulated callers which will ensure the configuration and provisioning of the system is right before the system goes live. Dwr Cymru Welsh Water bill 800k+ customers per year in a six week window in the February/March period of each year and the new contact centre solution will need to manage this significant peak of calls in an effective manner .The operational contact centre of DCCW is a 365 24/7 operation and it also has to manage a significant increase in calls in a short time frame, when from time to time DCCW customers face temporary loss of water of their supply. Again these critical scenarios will be tested robustly to ensure the contact centres solution can meet these demands in the live environment.

“We are delighted to be working on such innovative contact centre projects,” said Neil Moss, European Marketing Director of NextiraOne: “Each of this year’s winners has taken a fresh approach to its business needs, harnessing the latest technology to deliver a solution that brings measurable value to their businesses.”
 
With a direct sales and service presence in 17 countries, NextiraOne is Europe’s leading expert in communications services. The company designs, installs, maintains and supports solutions to meet its customers’ communications needs - from voice, data and video, to mobility, security and applications. NextiraOne has more than 60,000 customers across Europe and lists seven out of ten Fortune EURO 100 companies amongst its clients. A Genesys Gold Suite Certified Partner in Italy, Iberia, France, DACH, Benelux and Eastern and Central Europe, NextiraOne boasts more than 100 Genesys Experts and has more than 200 Alcatel-Lucent Contact Centre experts across Europe. The company has annual sales of more than €85 million in Contact Centre solutions and services.

Working with the world’s leading technology companies, NextiraOne provides end-to-end communications solutions to deliver measurable business benefits to its customers. The company’s strengths lie in its unequalled technology experience, the expertise of its people and its broad European reach. NextiraOne employs over 4,500 people, including more than 2,500 service experts.