ANZ Bank has pledged that its frontline customer service staff will be unaffected by the job cuts it announced last week.

It is believed hundreds of jobs are likely to disappear at ANZ in the next six months, but frontline staff including tellers and branch workers will not be affected. About 130 positions will be made redundant in ANZ's commercial and retail businesses in the first round of cuts.

In a statement, a bank spokesman said affected staff would be able to apply for other roles at ANZ, as well as have access to training to help them find jobs elsewhere. "These changes reflect continued belt-tightening in the business given the more subdued economic environment and the continued pressure funding costs are placing on margins," the spokesman said.

Optus is the latest telco to launch its own dedicated online customer support forum, supported by members of its social media team.

Rivals Telstra and Vodafone have launched similar forums in the past year to address customer issues and foster discussion amongst users of their products and services. The forums attracted tens of thousands of posts from interested customers.

The Optus site, My Optus Community, has been divided into a number of different sections focusing on the mobile, fixed-line telecommunications and network areas, with a separate section for business customers. “One of the best ways to measure the satisfaction of our customers is through feedback," Optus director of digital media Austin R. Bryan said. "With the introduction of a community forum we hope to build rapport with our customers and provide them with more choice and control in how they interact with us."

Global IT company Oracle has announced that several leading Australian public sector, financial institutions and public entities have implemented Oracle CRM On Demand to improve customer service.

Oracle established an Australian-based Oracle CRM On Demand offering enabling customers to host their data locally at the Australian Data Centre. This offering has been available to Oracle's Australian customers for over a year, enabling customers with previous restrictions for using SaaS solution hosted offshore to now have an onshore option.

During the past year, customers who have been provisioned in the local data centre on Oracle CRM On Demand include NBN Co, the Victorian Department of Human Services, NSW Government agency NSW Businesslink, Suncorp and AJ Lucas. "Oracle CRM On Demand meets our needs as it is easy to use, flexible and innovative and provides all the additional advantages of a hosted solution," said Department of Human Services CIO, Grahame Coles.

Wagering and gaming company Tabcorp is adding new customer service technology from Salmat.

Payment services provider Transaction Network Services partnered with Salmat, to give Tabcorp customers the ability to securely register their membership details via a phone keypad. Once this information is entered on the phone, it is stored, and protected through TNS' stored card tokenisation solution.

"Our investment with TNS and its integration with Salmat will reduce our customer service team's manual activities, improve our approach to protecting sensitive data, and provide a consistent methodology on how we manage payment information collected online and by phone," said Tabcorp's Adam Rytenskild. "With TNSPay Stored Card Tokenisation we are taking additional steps to ensure payment information is protected from misuse, and this will also ensure our customers have a positive experience with our interactive customer service channels."

Air New Zealand has introduced a new customer service initiative that asks passengers to name their price for a class upgrade on international flights.

The OneUp offer will give Economy or Premium Economy class passengers the chance to bid for an upgrade, if the seats are available. Air New Zealand has been trialling the system with passengers who purchased tickets in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia, but that will now be extended to include passengers ticketed from New Zealand to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing, as well as passengers travelling between Los Angeles and London, and Hong Kong and London.

Where opportunities for upgrades exist, Economy and Premium Economy ticket holders who have booked directly with Air New Zealand either online, through the contact centre or at an Air New Zealand Holidays store may receive an email inviting them to make an offer to upgrade to the next cabin class. Passengers whose offers are accepted would receive email confirmation several days prior to travel.

ANZ Bank has pledged that its frontline customer service staff will be unaffected by the job cuts it announced last week.

It is believed hundreds of jobs are likely to disappear at ANZ in the next six months, but frontline staff including tellers and branch workers will not be affected. About 130 positions will be made redundant in ANZ's commercial and retail businesses in the first round of cuts.

In a statement, a bank spokesman said affected staff would be able to apply for other roles at ANZ, as well as have access to training to help them find jobs elsewhere. "These changes reflect continued belt-tightening in the business given the more subdued economic environment and the continued pressure funding costs are placing on margins," the spokesman said.

Optus is the latest telco to launch its own dedicated online customer support forum, supported by members of its social media team.

Rivals Telstra and Vodafone have launched similar forums in the past year to address customer issues and foster discussion amongst users of their products and services. The forums attracted tens of thousands of posts from interested customers.

The Optus site, My Optus Community, has been divided into a number of different sections focusing on the mobile, fixed-line telecommunications and network areas, with a separate section for business customers. “One of the best ways to measure the satisfaction of our customers is through feedback," Optus director of digital media Austin R. Bryan said. "With the introduction of a community forum we hope to build rapport with our customers and provide them with more choice and control in how they interact with us."

Global IT company Oracle has announced that several leading Australian public sector, financial institutions and public entities have implemented Oracle CRM On Demand to improve customer service.

Oracle established an Australian-based Oracle CRM On Demand offering enabling customers to host their data locally at the Australian Data Centre. This offering has been available to Oracle's Australian customers for over a year, enabling customers with previous restrictions for using SaaS solution hosted offshore to now have an onshore option.

During the past year, customers who have been provisioned in the local data centre on Oracle CRM On Demand include NBN Co, the Victorian Department of Human Services, NSW Government agency NSW Businesslink, Suncorp and AJ Lucas. "Oracle CRM On Demand meets our needs as it is easy to use, flexible and innovative and provides all the additional advantages of a hosted solution," said Department of Human Services CIO, Grahame Coles.

Wagering and gaming company Tabcorp is adding new customer service technology from Salmat.

Payment services provider Transaction Network Services partnered with Salmat, to give Tabcorp customers the ability to securely register their membership details via a phone keypad. Once this information is entered on the phone, it is stored, and protected through TNS' stored card tokenisation solution.

"Our investment with TNS and its integration with Salmat will reduce our customer service team's manual activities, improve our approach to protecting sensitive data, and provide a consistent methodology on how we manage payment information collected online and by phone," said Tabcorp's Adam Rytenskild. "With TNSPay Stored Card Tokenisation we are taking additional steps to ensure payment information is protected from misuse, and this will also ensure our customers have a positive experience with our interactive customer service channels."

Air New Zealand has introduced a new customer service initiative that asks passengers to name their price for a class upgrade on international flights.

The OneUp offer will give Economy or Premium Economy class passengers the chance to bid for an upgrade, if the seats are available. Air New Zealand has been trialling the system with passengers who purchased tickets in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia, but that will now be extended to include passengers ticketed from New Zealand to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing, as well as passengers travelling between Los Angeles and London, and Hong Kong and London.

Where opportunities for upgrades exist, Economy and Premium Economy ticket holders who have booked directly with Air New Zealand either online, through the contact centre or at an Air New Zealand Holidays store may receive an email inviting them to make an offer to upgrade to the next cabin class. Passengers whose offers are accepted would receive email confirmation several days prior to travel.

Budget airline AirAsia will drastically change its customer service model with plans to close its contact centre service in Malaysia early next year.

Group CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said the service, outsourced to another firm, was not making money and the sales amount was insignificant. Fernandes said the move would encourage more customers to use the carrier's online helpdesk or go to the nearest AirAsia Travel and Service Centre.

"Call centres cannot contain our fast-growing consumer base and their needs," he said. "We stopped sales at the centres four months ago and we will cease call centre services by March 2012." AirAsia has asked its contact centres in Indonesia and Thailand to report whether there is a need for their services. "However, we will maintain call centre services in China and India due to the absence of an AirAsia base there," Fernandes said.

The Negros Oriental Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Association in regional Philippines is offering free customer service training to prospective contact centre agents.

The courses, provided in conjunction with member-companies of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) are made available under the information technology-business process outsourcing industry-based training for work scholarship program. ICT Dumaguete president Randy Bandiola said 900 scholarships are offered by three Tesda accredited schools.

Metro Dumagute College is accepting 400 students, while the remaining 500 slots are divided between the Philippine Call Center Institute (PCCI) and Science Technology Institute (STI). Bandiola said the ICT association is strengthening linkages with schools and local government units to attract more potential ICT workers in the province.

A bipartisan bill has been tabled in the US House of Representatives to make companies that offshore customer service overseas ineligible for grants or guaranteed loans from the federal government.

Introduced by lawmakers Tim Bishop and David McKinley, the US Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act would also put some aggressive mandates on contact centre operations. Under the proposed legislation, not only would customer service representatives working overseas for US corporations have to disclose their locations upon request, they would also have to offer callers the option of being transferred to customer service agents back in America.

The Bill also requires the Secretary of Labour to maintain a list of employers that locate contact centres overseas. The companies also require to provide 120 day advance notification before moving a contact centre overseas.

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has launched a mobile customer service coach, MobileLINK, aimed at providing greater consumer access with the central bank.

The custom-made coach will enhance access to basic banking services and provide advisory services on banking, insurance and SME financing related matters. "The journey for MobileLINK will begin today to cover about 50% of the identified non-urban areas nationwide in the next three years," said BNM governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

MobileLINK will also provide information on personal credit through the Central Credit Reference Information System, information on BNM through a self-service web-based terminal and advisory services on other financial-related. "It will also enable the bank to hear directly from the public on financial issues concerning our financial system," Zeti said.

Chinese financial services company Ping An Insurance Group has started offering video interaction with its clients, thanks to a Genesys system.

Ping An's customer contact agents are now equipped to handle video communication with customers, improving interaction and service quality. The agents and customers will use video communication to make the business more direct by gaining a timely understanding of their situation or claim status, while helping agents accelerate business management.

Agents will use video and fingerprint viewing for verification of applicants' identities. Ping An is able to centralise all its contact center resources, provide intelligent routing, command real-time monitoring and historical statistics reporting, and optimise the customer service operations.

Leading Australian ICT infrastructure solutions and services company, UXC Connect has announced that it has achieved a first in contact centre solutions for businesses in Australasia by integrating the Genesys Skills Assessor, Genesys Workforce Management and Genesys Intelligent Workload Distribution to work as one business solution.

Working with leading Australian internet provider iiNet, UXC Connect has successfully implemented the solution into a pilot team of 250 agents located at the telco’s contact centres in Perth, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.

The pilot, which commenced last month and will continue for 6 weeks, allows tasks and knowledge tests to be automatically delivered to agents at times of low call volumes by sending an alert advising that a task needs to be completed all with minimum impact to contact centre operations.

Caitriona Hayes, Head of Human Resources iiNet says that the strategic timing and integration of the trial program, greatly assisted in delivering the updated training resources the company needed as it launched new products into the market.

“This trial has given iiNet the capability to mobilise quickly on our latest product launch to ensure our people have all the information to provide our customers the best solutions and as always, awesome customer service,” said Hayes.

By using the Genesys Skills Assessor, UXC Connect’s customised solution can determine an operator’s potential skills or knowledge gaps and it can then provide employees with the training they need in these knowledge areas. The integration of Genesys Workforce Management (WFM) can forecast how many staff require further training, which is then delivered to the employee at a time that will not inconvenience other employees or the contact centre customers.Further integration with Genesys Intelligent Workload Distribution (IWD) ensures the efficient delivery of consistent customer service by optimising the routing of calls and tasks across an integrated pool of resources, ensuring increased customer time and reducing the impact of the task times for the contact centre team.

In the UK, leading performance optimisation solutions provider, Silver Lining Solutions, with whom Genesys has a long-standing OEM relationship, has implemented the software for leading telecoms providers O2 and BT. In both cases, the contact centres have seen impressive results with 02 achieving average reductions of 50 per cent in training time and 25 per cent in transferred calls, as well as significant increases in training efficiency and first call resolution rates.

UXC Connect, CEO Ian Poole said that the pilot program with iiNet is a great example of how UXC Connect is working with its partners to deliver positive customer outcomes with measurable business results.

“This is a great result for UXC Connect and our Strategic Partner Genesys and it demonstrates our ability to deliver innovative and industry leading solutions to our customers,” said Poole. “It is yet another example of our experience in developing Australian-first solutions and working with our partners to customise existing solutions to meet our customers evolving needs – in this case the value for iiNet is the complete custom integration of the contact centre solutions to deliver a strong return on investment that reduces impact on workflow within the organisation.”

Resolve has been appointed to the Western Australian (WA) Government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Common Use Agreement (CUA) 14008. The CUA 14008 is an agreement for all WA public authorities purchasing ICT services, and allows government buyers to procure services from suitably qualified and experienced consulting organisations.

Resolve successfully qualified under both the ICT Project Management and Business Solution Services categories which include the establishment, implementation, management, maintenance and support of corporate applications.

Chris Morison, CEO said “Resolve is pleased to be recognised and selected as a government endorsed supplier in WA. This is a major step forward for us in this region and allows government departments to work with Resolve to directly procure our services.” Mr Morison continued to say that “WA is an important market for Resolve, and we expect to see further growth as we continue to expand our product offerings in line with customer needs.”

Resolve has significant experience working with State and Federal Government, supplying highly regarded Dynamic Case Management solutions to agencies such as the Western Australian Ombudsman, Department of Communities (QLD), Department of Justice (VIC), and Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Tyreright, the Australian-owned company specialising in tyre sales and fitment have chosen livepro®, the knowledge management solution by IMC Communications to support their knowledge management and growth plans.

With 34 Tyreright stores and fast growth expected across every state and territory, Dominic Byrne, Digital Marketing Manager needed a knowledge management system that matched the company’s brand promise of ‘right advice, right service and right choice’.

“If we want to support our stores to strive for operational excellence and superior service, they need to have the right information at hand 24 hours, 7 days a week.”

At first, Tyreright thought they needed to get a knowledge management system custom built and were several months down that path when they considered livepro®.

“With several hundred Tyreright franchisees expected to be operating in the near future, I knew our plans for a custom build wasn’t going to be enough.”

“The tyre retail industry is a very competitive and busy environment, our stores and employees need relevant, accurate and timely information. Whether the information is pushed out from head office or requested by staff, we needed a real-time platform to manage and deliver this. Therefore, I cancelled the custom build project and opted for livepro®,” said Bryne.

Via livepro®, Tyreright employees will access their operations manual, pricing, training, brand guidelines, applications, competitor websites, contacts, promotions, advertising material, documents, forms, media files, legislation and conforming processes.

After only three months of deployment, the livepro® analytics are proving that Tyreright staff are accessing livepro® continuously throughout the day. “This access is having a very positive effect on reducing administration time in all head office departments,” said Bryne.

The University of Sydney (USYD) has chosen Resolve to design and implement their new Enterprise Complaints and Disputes Handling System to overcome consistency, productivity, and compliance issues experienced with their existing system.

USYD currently utilises a number of technologies to host, manage and track complaints and disputes received from the general public, staff and students, with a number of faculties, departments and administrative units utilising their own stand-alone systems to accommodate this process. These systems are limited in their functionality, lack integration across core business systems, and are relatively unsupported. This disparity and lack of functionality presents administrative difficulties in relation to the coordinated recording, management, and tracking of complaints and disputes, as well as USYD’s compliance and reporting obligations.

The implementation of the new Resolve Enterprise Complaints and Disputes Handling System (ECDHS) will address these issues and meet the core business need to standardise the complaints and disputes management process and workflows to ensure accuracy, productivity, timely response and reporting.

Resolve will provide USYD with automated and standardised workflow management capability. The system will include web-based technology to facilitate online lodgement, and will be able to interface to complimentary USYD systems such as TRIM, Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. Resolve’s centralised and secured data management infrastructure will ensure access to data is restricted to the applicable business unit, and will only be made available to individual users on a ‘need to know’ basis. Greater reporting functionality will allow for better management and operational decision making and compliance.

Resolve’s experience and expertise in the education sector is growing with implementations in the Department of Education and Training QLD (Ethical Standards Unit and Legal and Administrative Law Branch) and Victoria’s Merit Protection Boards (part of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development).