by
Intercity
Demand for the convenience and security of pre-paid cards in an increasingly cashless society has assured significant growth for one of the early innovators, PrePay Solutions. An alliance between Edenred (formerly Accor Services) and MasterCard Worldwide, the company made its mark by being one of the first to introduce stored-value payment cards to make Internet shopping more accessible. It has since grown to offer a range of transaction-processing, loyalty, and electronic voucher solutions for recognised brand names, including Debenhams, TUI Travel, Virgin Money and others.
The Problem
When growth required PrePay Solutions to upgrade its offices, the company worked with Intercity Technology to embrace cloud-based IP Telephony for all of their operations, assuring agility for continued growth and the ability to change direction as opportunity dictates.
Employees can change desk, site location, even become home-based, and take their phone extension with them. They have the benefit of audio conferencing and the company has enhanced the end-user services it fulfils for customers with the integration of a highly efficient call centre.
The Solution
Intercity Technology, who also support PrePay Solutions with data centre services, designed a fully-managed, cloud communications service for the company’s two new offices covering 135 extensions. The move has allowed PrePay Solutions to simplify significantly its management of their telephony infrastructure, and reduce costs for its service centre, all the while supporting its commitment to exceed the service level agreements it sets for customers.
“We are a dynamic company with a history of being first to market with many of our innovations. It was natural for us to want to try something new. We also had the advantage of working with a provider we knew had a similar approach to business and had trusted for years. We have confidence in their people and their commitment to make everything work for us”
Mark Faithfull, Head of Operations – PrePay Solutions
Hosted Call Centre Enhances Service and Reporting
PrePay Solutions has incorporated a highly-functional hosted call centre with IVR and call recording to support its end-user services, a core element of its solution offering. Centrally managed, the call centre can be configured to support multiple call queues for PrePay Solutions’ various customers, while a secure web-based management tool gives PrePay Solutions the wealth of historical and dynamic information it requires to confirm commitments and enrich customer reporting. Metrics can reflect different customer profiles and cover the length of calls, answer rates, call outcomes and much more.
Further, PrePay Solutions must meet strict Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards for security with recorded conversations often involving the exchange of sensitive personal data. Intercity Technology Cloud Communications provide the assurance required with a fully managed secure MPLS network on Cable&Wireless Worldwide infrastructure to support the solution, and the telephony platform itself hosted within the Cable&Wireless Worldwide secure data centre.
“Intercity Technology not only met our needs in the solution design, they also worked to help us understand what was possible.”
Mark Faithfull, Head of Operations – PrePay Solutions
“Intercity Technology not only met our needs in the solution design, they also worked to help us understand what was possible. We have a solution that behaves the way we want it to behave, and can be easily changed for new opportunities. Our ability to exceed client SLAs is important to us and the information we can gather from the Hosted Call Centre has become a real resource for enhancing service quality,” says Faithfull.
Cloud Delivery Eases Traffic and Management Burden
Intercity Technology Cloud Communications platform delivers significant efficiencies in the way call traffic is managed for PrePay Solutions’ service centre. The company frequently experiences spikes in call volumes, at particular times of the day or in response to the end-customer promotions they support. To accommodate these, calls are held in queues in the cloud until an agent becomes available or benchmarks dictate routing the call to the company’s third-party back-up provider.
Rather than having to provision a network designed to manage large call volumes, the network bandwidth requirement can be tied to the maximum number of agents. The company maintains its high levels of service for all of its customers with a small, highly efficient team—up to eight agents may be live at once and they have the information at their fingertips to understand which customer is linked to a given call. The entire solution has allowed the team to improve call answer rates and outcomes, and cut network costs, while reducing the reliance on the back-up service.
PrePay Solutions has opted for Intercity Technology Cloud Communications for all of their extensions, with desk phones and dedicated audio conferencing units for their meeting rooms. All site-to-site calls, including conference calls, are internal, managed over their private network. They have the convenience of a single company directory and short-code dialling, while new extensions can be ordered ready for use within five days and configurations managed centrally by the Intercity Technology service team. All of the Intercity Technology services – their data centre services, telephony, call centre and networks – are monitored and supported by the same team of service engineers, who have over time built up a good understanding of the company and its requirements.
“What I want from our telephony or any technology system is to have something that just works. I don’t want to have to think about it and I don’t want it to prevent me from taking advantage of something new. Intercity Technology provides the ‘secret sauce’ that makes this happen. Its technology works, changes are easy and they are available when I need them, so I don’t have to think about it.” Faithfull concludes.
“What I want from our telephony or any technology system is to have something that just works. I don’t want to have to think about it and I don’t want it to prevent me from taking advantage of something new. Intercity Technology provides the ‘secret sauce’ that makes this happen.
Mark Faithfull, Head of Operations – PrePay Solutions