MIA Telecoms, the sole distributor of Samsung telecommunication and PABX equipment in Sub-Saharan Africa, has announced that Samsung’s OfficeServ is fast becoming the preferred choice for call centres countrywide. A host of sophisticated features are available on all systems in the Samsung OfficeServ range, ensuring clients maximise their potential of their communications solution.
MIA Telecoms managing director Bryan Driessel says communications in call centres has changed, it is much more than making and receiving calls. “The Samsung OfficeServ is a truly convergent system that allows you to share voice, data, fax and video over the one IP-based local or wide area network, while integrating with your computer systems and applications.”
“With a modular architecture that allows cost effective incremental expansion, clients can rest assured that their Samsung OfficeServ solution can be upgraded to offer more services as their needs evolve,” he explains.
The Samsung OfficeServe has the capacity for up to 600 extensions, making it an ideal solution to meet the needs of both small and large call centres. It supports a range of stylish, easy-to-use ergonomic digital and IP handsets to provide for each user’s exact needs – from making and receiving calls, forwarding and paging, to simple navigation through the system’s extensive list of features. A key differentiator of the OfficeServ is the common intuitive “user interface for both the digital and IP handsets.
In contrast to other IP systems, the Samsung OfficeServ builds on the powerful functionality of the Samsung iDCS range, having the most comprehensive voice application suite as well as advanced IP applications.
Furthermore, OfficeServ easily integrates with call management software, providing comprehensive historical and real-time reporting of call information. Through detailed management reports, group and extension activity can be analysed to provide a thorough evaluation of call traffic, ensuring that call centres make optimal use of their communications resources.
Driessel says the Samsung range of voicemail solutions provides advanced call processing features such as voicemail, auto attendant and faxmail to make call centres more efficient. “With the trunk-to-trunk functionality, calls can be seamlessly and invisibly diverted from any office to any mobile phone or to one’s home number, ensuring that people are always reachable – wherever they are.”
Samsung Voicemail is simple to use and puts the user in control. At the touch of a button, each user can easily record their own personal greeting; screen calls before choosing to answer them; record and send messages to a group; and record personal reminders or even conversations.
The auto attendant can answer multiple calls simultaneously, providing different greetings for different departments. External callers are prompted by the auto attendant to enter their choice of destination for direct connection to the correct person, without the need for a receptionist to handle the call. If no extension number is dialed within a specified time, the call is automatically connected to a receptionist, or another specified extension, an ideal solution for busy or after hour periods.
The Samsung OfficeServ Least Cost Routing (LCR) feature provides call centres with an automatic mechanism for saving money on their communication costs. LCR automatically selects the most cost effective outside line for the number dialed by any of the agents, it can choose from up to 16 different call providers — ensuring the cheapest route.
The unique integral Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) package, provided as a standard feature to all OfficeServ users, offers any working environment the opportunity to optimise the service incoming callers receive and maximise the efficiency of staff.
“And to help you identify how your system is being used, departmental groups and operators can enter specific codes for incoming and outgoing calls to facilitate future analysis,” he adds. “Coding allows you to allocate certain calls into groups or accounts so that the OfficeServ can provide a precise breakdown of calls made and relative costs chargeable for each individual account, an ideal feature for internal departments who make and receive calls on behalf of third parties.”
Calls can be distributed intelligently – using first in first out (FIFO) rules – to the first available agent within the group. This can minimise the length of time before a call is answered and ensure you keep and even flow of call traffic to all members of a group. If no extensions are free, the call can be held in a queue, while automated messages reassure them of prompt attention as soon as the next call handler becomes available.
The OfficeServ can cater for up to 30 groups – each with a maximum of 48 agents, allowing agents to be members of multiple groups and time to complete administration before accepting the next call. In addition, the OfficeServ can also be configured to operate within up to six time zones so that callers receive and appropriate response and are then routed to the correct destination depending on the time of day, week or year the call.
It can also provide incoming call statistics for a group or extension via the LCD of a display handset, giving supervisors a simple snap-shot of call traffic and activity to evaluate the performance of groups and agents for example: Calls in queue, Waiting time, Agent status, Average queuing time, and Total incoming calls received. This functionality is ideal for those departments that operate as an incoming call centre with groups or teams of operators with their own terminal – such as your accounts department, sales desk or response centre.
“If your organisation has a call centre, or a busy sales or service department, Samsung’s call analysis software provides you with a powerful tool to improve the level of service to your customers, improving productivity and resource allocation,” says Driessel.
MIA Telecoms offers a suite of call centre software applications consisting of modules that can work independently or as an entity to provide a high level of Call Centre functionality within small or medium sized businesses.
He says no longer are companies too small or not quite the right environment to introduce Call Centre software as a means to improving their customer relationship management. “Our software can be configured to exactly match your requirements. Together they provide the full range of features and functions for inbound, outbound and web-enabled Call Centres. The modules are intended to allow the user to be able to configure and reconfigure without the need for specialist Telecoms knowledge.”
In addition, Campaign Connect is an outbound call centre module ideal for market research and tele-canvassing. It is a stand alone, client-server application that has an agent, a customisable web browser interface. Features include Preview and Power dialing, HTML scripting, scheduling of appointments and diarised call-backs.
Used in conjunction with Call Connect, the supervisor module provides over 300 reports both historical and real-time. These reports can be displayed in text, tables and graphs and all information can be exported to standard windows programs. This means the supervisor can take ultimate control of the call centre, making “on-the-fly” changes to the system – logging agents in and out, enabling and disabling queues and changing agents skills and properties.
