Forty-seat IP-based contact centre straddles Tasman

Voice and data integrator BTAS has completed an IP telephony, 40-seat contact centre deployment straddling the Tasman sea for travel agent Globus & Cosmos.

Gavin Jones, CEO at Sydney integrator BTAS, said the cross-ocean deployment for Switzerland-based Globus & Cosmos was complex. Not many deployments had been done that crossed borders and had that level of IP functionality, Jones said.

"It's not the biggest or anything, but it's a complex one," he said. "It's one of the early adopters in IP applications across a contact centre."
BTAS had put up several options for global travel wholesaler Globus & Cosmos to upgrade its infrastructure, with the twin aims of enhancing customer services and raising revenue, Jones said.

"It will help them share their employees across Australia and New Zealand at a time of expansion and growth," he said.

Jones said the company -- which had a total of 40 seats in its Sydney and Auckland call centres -- was re-positioning itself for growth following that industry's time in the doldrums post-9/11.

Globus & Cosmos had chosen a setup that incorporated Alcatel hardware and Enterprise IP communication servers, with Alcatel Contact Centre software on the server and applications such as Alcatel Contact Centre Agent softphones, Contact Centre Supervisor and Contact Centre Advanced Routing, he said.

"We had provided support for their current infrastructure and we were involved in moving them to a new base," Jones said.
BTAS designed, deployed, managed and would support the deployment for five years.

Stewart Williams, MD at Globus & Cosmos in Australia, said that telecommunications was critical in the travel industry.

"It was important for us to choose a system that provided scalability as we continue to grow," he said.