CWA opens new Bangkok center

Outsourcer Caelan Wright & Associates (CWA) has opened a new contact center in the Thai capital Bangkok.

The 500-seat center is expected to double in size by next year, offering a range of services collectively labelled "integrated customer touch". Co-chief executive Adrian Apperley told reporters CWA has been delivering personalised customer services to a broad range of clients across all industry sectors in Thailand, including financial institutions and insurance companies that for more than 18 months.

CWA provides both inbound and outbound contact-center services, direct marketing and telemarketing campaign planning and implementation, consultancy on technical issues, marketing and database management and training for personnel from junior to management levels. "Thailand's economy has been badly affected by both domestic and foreign factors over the first two quarters of this year," Apperley said. "In this situation, Caelan Wright offers the best solutions in call- and contact-center services as well as in direct marketing specifically tailored to, and coordinated with, customers' needs, for the most effective and profitable result possible."

Avis opens new Vietnamese office

Global car rental company Avis has opened a regional branch and contact center in the Vietnamese economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

The new branch is already in operation, servicing the growing number of foreign and domestic companies, visitors, leading hotels & resorts. Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, is a center of economic, science, technology and industry, accounting for a high proportion of Vietnam's economy.

"We expand our branch in Vietnam with goal to reach more Vietnam's major economic centers. This presence is completely in line with our aim to grow and provide customers with better service, just like our expansion in this demanding market," said Avis Vietnam general director Le Viet Hai Son. "Today, the need for reliable and tailored service is greater than ever, and we are here to make sure people get what they want".

Chunghwa Telecom wins regional Best Use of Technology award

Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's leading telecommunications provider, has received top honors from the Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium (APCSC) in several categories including "Best Use of Technology of the Year 2009" for their government consumer voucher contact center.

In early 2009 the government of Taiwan launched an economic stimulus initiative - the Consumption Voucher Program - to energise the local economy by issuing shopping vouchers to more than 23 million of its citizens to boost domestic consumer spending. To ensure success of such a massive program, they needed to quickly set up a specialised, high-capacity contact center to answer questions from both retailers and consumers.

The flexibility of the virtual contact center platform, powered by CosmoCall Universe (CCU) allowed them to keep up with the growing demand, handling nearly 100,000 daily calls by the time the Consumer Vouchers were officially released to the public. "We won the 'Best Use of Technology of the Year 2009' award from APCSC utilising contact center technology provided by CosmoCom," said Chunghwa's Ben Lin. "We were confident that the virtual contact center architecture could handle the extremely high volume of inbound calls from the citizens across the whole country of Taiwan."

Unified communications specialist, Aspect, has been named Frost & Sullivan's 2010 Contact Center Applications Vendor of the Year in the Asia Pacific region.

The award recognises Aspect's "exemplary business growth and performance in the Asia Pacific region in 2009", including significant new customer wins in new and existing vertical market segments, as well as its success in gaining momentum in unified communications applications deployment in contact centers. The Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards are held annually to recognise companies and individuals that have "pushed the boundaries of excellence - rising above the competition and demonstrating outstanding performance across the region".

"Aspect Software is a leading player in the contact center applications industry with good market presence in the Asia Pacific region," said Frost and Sullivan's Manoj Menon. "Its unified communications applications for contact centers have enabled enterprises to enhance their service offerings, addressing key challenges of proprietary architectures."

 'your call' blog
by Dr Catriona Wallace

Men don't like to talk and call centre industry does wonders for people with crap attitudes... ....

I am now somewhere above Thailand headed to India to present the results of the Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Report for India. I will be speaking with the press and industry in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. All in four days. Outstanding. For me, it doesn't get much better than speaking to Indians about contact centre experiences. I have a great love and respect for the country of India, its history and people and .... India being the contact centre capital of the world.... makes it about the perfect destination for me. That, and you can buy really inexpensive fabulous jewellery.

But I will save sharing the Indian results with you until next week.

What I will share with you are some of the very cool demographic and industry vertical differences in the Australian Contact Centre Consumer Index.

Get a load of this....

Read the full blog here .....

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