Koorong Spreads the Word with Distributed
Mitel IP Telephony Contact Center Solution

Solution
Robert Bootes understands the value that a well-run contact center can bring to a retail chain. Robert runs the technology services group at Koorong, a company based in Sydney, Australia, that retails Christian products via an Australia-wide chain of company-owned retail outlets.

With approximately 400 staff scattered across 13 locations in Australia, a distributed contact center is at the heart of Koorong’s business, supporting their sophisticated “bricks and clicks” retail operation – combining retail, mail order catalogue and online sales.

Despite the enormous success of their website sales, Koorong has found that many of their clients still want to speak directly with members of the customer service team when making online purchases. As a result, approximately 10 percent of company revenue is directly generated by Koorong’s contact center agents.

To support their rapidly expanding retail operations, Bootes decided to migrate their existing customer contact center to IP telephony. Bootes explained, “Our old contact center was a reporting black hole. It was difficult to track performance and productivity. We looked at more than 20 other solutions before we settled on the Mitel® 3300 IP Communications Platform and Mitel Customer Interaction Solutions. Mitel simply offered the best integrated IP telephony package for the money.”

Spreading the Word
At Koorong, retail success requires the efficient delivery of services in multiple time zones across a 13-hour workday. With the business handling more than 1,000 inbound sales and service inquiries each day, efficiently juggling team resources and workloads are crucial to maintaining both service levels and profitability.

Koorong has major retail locations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, with each location featuring a Mitel® 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) system.

Each 3300 ICP is networked via IP MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) services to create a seamless Australia-wide IP solution. A further eight retail locations across regional Australia and a warehouse in Sydney are integrated into the solution. Agents for the distributed contact center are able to be located anywhere that an IP network connection is available.

More than 10 percent of Koorong’s sales transactions are processed via the www.koorong.com website. To supplement sales generated by the retail outlets and website, approximately 120,000 catalogues are mailed to clients each month.

Each catalogue marketing campaign generates a surge in the volume of telephone sales and inquiries. The distributed Mitel Customer Interaction Solution allows Koorong to effectively handle demand surges, without needing a large centralized workforce.

Bootes said, “Mitel’s solution has given us enormous flexibility in how we allocate our inbound phone inquiries amongst our customer service team. Team members can now be rostered more efficiently across time zones, with calls automatically sent to the best person – regardless of their location. We can now offer much more flexible working conditions, handle call volume surges more effectively, and our productivity has received a major boost.”

Administration of the Mitel IP communications solution is handled centrally, with easy to understand web-based administration tools. Tasks which formerly needed an expensive voice support engineer to visit the site are now routinely handled by in-house IT support staff. Detailed contact center reports are now automatically generated and emailed to relevant staff on a daily basis.