The Interactive Intelligence contact centre solution, implemented by ATIO, is providing effective support to East Africa`s largest bank as it shifts its customer contact centre in-house.

The Interactive Intelligence contact centre solution, implemented by ATIO, is providing effective support to
East Africa`s largest bank as it shifts its customer contact centre in-house.

At the end of 2009, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) implemented its first in-house contact centre. The decision has allowed the bank to take control of in-bound and out-bound customer interactions with surprising ease.

KCB is the largest commercial banking group in East Africa, with an asset base of over $2.5 billion and over 200 branches. As a large-scale, widespread organisation, the bank required a highly scalable solution and an implementation process that wouldn`t impact negatively on existing operations.

“The big challenge for us was to get a solution in place that was fully integrated and that met our need for work flow optimisation. We particularly wanted to avoid managing and attempting to integrate disparate hardware elements, and multiple servers,” says Jimmy Masinde, Head of Contact Centre at KCB.

KCB went through an extensive vendor selection process to establish the right technology for its 66 seat contact centre. Nineteen initial vendor proposals were received, which were then cut down to a short-list of five. From this list the bank decided to implement the world leading Interactive Intelligence solution, provided by specialist South African ICT company, ATIO.

The Interactive Intelligence CIC contact centre solution with its full multi-media capability was deployed with modules such as Unified Messaging, Interaction Recorder, Interaction Dialler for outbound campaigns and Interaction Optimiser (with workforce optimiser and scheduler) included.

“The key elements in the decision were integration and ease of use,” says Masinde. “The Interactive Intelligence system won in both these areas. It is also very scalable and can therefore cater for growth. We can add seats to the contact centre in a very simple and quick process, which is important.”

The KCB contact centre now services in-bound and out-bound calls for all the bank`s customers – including those living in Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

“We`ve got over 200 branches, so when it comes to in-bound calls, customer service and education is obviously very important,” says Masinde. “Equally, out-bound marketing,
sales and debt management calls are a big part of the centre as well.”

After nearly a year of operation, the Interactive Intelligence solution has proved to be exactly the right fit for KCB.

“We`re very happy. The stability of the system combined with its scalability was exactly what we were looking for - it caters to our immediate and future needs,” adds Masinde. “The support offered by both Interactive Intelligence and ATIO has been fantastic as well, so we`ve enjoyed a lot of value from our investment.”