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Contents 
Introduction
Data#3
Toyota Financial Services
NRMA
Inchcape
Executive summary |
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Inchcape Motors' Subaru business uses a VoIP system to link its sites in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth with a seamless phone network. Like Toyota Financial Services, Inchcape enjoys lower costs by having calls to 1300 SUBARU routed to the closest capital city, and then carrying them to its Sydney call centre over its frame relay links. This approach has allowed the business to expand from 500 employees at 12 sites to 700 people at 22 sites with as little as a 10 percent increase in data network capacity, says IT manager David Starr. The reverse process is used for outbound calls: "that works quite well," he says.
Each employee has their own extension number, and can log into the Avaya phone system at any of the company's sites or even when they are off the premises. Some managers and account staff are able to work from home on occasions, with access to the phone system and the dealer management system over an ADSL connection.
The CRM system is used to track all customer interactions, whether they involve sales staff or call centre agents. This allows agents to quickly connect customers with the salesperson they had been dealing with, regardless of his or her location on that particular day and even if they can't remember the salesperson's name. It also ensures that consistent trade-in figures are quoted when potential customers take their cars to more than one location for valuation, and avoids starting the sales process from scratch if customers call in when their original salesperson is away. Data mining of these records yields information that can help close subsequent deals.
The next step is to implement skills-based routing for all members of staff who deal with customers, not just those in the call centre. This means agents will be able to transfer a call to, say, an available Forrester expert without having to identify him or her by name or determining that person's current location.
About 40 percent of staff use a desk phone, with the remainder using mobile IP handsets along with PDAs or tablet PCs so they can move freely around the complex while assisting customers and recording information such as colour preferences. The system is configured so that when sales staff do not want to be disturbed because they are busy with customers, any calls are forwarded to their colleagues on a "next-available" basis or to voicemail if the caller specifically wants to talk to that person.
As some employees' work takes them off-site, Inchcape uses a feature that can associate an extension number with a mobile phone, ringing both at the same time when a call comes in and then routing it to whichever answers first. The company would like to extend this idea to encompass mobile phones that support VoIP over Wi-Fi, but is still waiting for such devices to come onto the market.
Inchcape is investigating the use of an IVR or speech recognition front end, although it has no specific plans at this stage. While this could lead to increased efficiency, Starr is concerned about maintaining the "Subaru experience". He says initial indications are that customers have a distinct preference for having their calls answered by a person.
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