Cable & Wireless

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Smooth operator services

The challenge

Cable & Wireless had a vision; to unify all systems that were used to handle its operator services product portfolio, to bring about a significant improvement in the efficiency, manageability, flexibility and capacity of C&W's operator services call centres, and to enable C&W to provide tailored products to an ever-evolving and expanding marketplace.

At that time, each of the operator services products (national and international directory enquiries, national and international operator assistance, emergency authority access [999 calls] as well as services for registered disabled and elderly subscribers) was handled using diverse systems.

The vision was the Operator Services Platform (OSP): a flexible and highly resilient call centre system capable of handling all types of operator services calls.

The solution

OSP was the largest system integration exercise C&W had ever undertaken.

The design philosophy for OSP is the use of open standards and interfaces, allowing no single point of failure for critical systems, industry standard hardware and PC based operator positions.

The platform provides many innovative and unique features to the operator services organization including:

• A universal workstation that enables an agent to sit at any position and take all the types of call that they are trained to handle, which includes an OSP specific keyboard.
• A centralised data warehouse holding detailed information about every call that the platform handles (used for both historic and real-time reporting).
• Real-time data input to workforce management applications used to plan the agent numbers on a minute-by-minute basis.
• Access to directory enquiry databases within C&W and BT as well as more than 20 international countries.
• The capability to have automated, branded welcome messages at call presentation.
• The ability to use automated scripts on voice servers (with voice recognition, if required).
• Creation of call detail records for all calls handled by the platform, which are automatically transferred to the corporate billing systems.

The highlights

IPL's experience in the specification and development of complex software based systems enabled C&W to ensure that all deliverables met expectation.

The platform handles in excess of 7 million calls per month, with a peak call rate of around 45,000 calls per hour in the busiest hours. The average length of a call is around 30 seconds; significantly shorter than more ‘traditional’ contact call centres.

The programme has been a very visible operational success and has delivered an impressive return on investment through efficiency savings and revenue generation from branded operator services following the deregulation of directory enquiries in the UK.

OSP has since undergone a major upgrade to use programmable switches, the latest interactive voice server technology, and other improvements that will increase call volume capacity, increase product flexibility, and enhance platform management and supportability.