Ease of configuration, user autonomy, less involvement by technological staff, adaptability to the handicaps of each employee, full integration with existing infrastructure—these are just some of the keys to Kiamo's success!

Flandre Ateliers (AlterEos Group) is a cooperative social enterprise that works to promote the employment of handicapped individuals who have difficulty finding their place in the economy, either temporarily or permanently. With a staff of 308 people based at two different sites (Marcq-en-Baroeul and Tourcoing, both in France), Flandre Ateliers provides its regional and national clients with a variety of services in the industrial sectors (packaging, contract work, services at the client's site) and service industries (call centre, scanning/electronic document management/archiving, training).

Flandre Ateliers provides call centre services to a wide variety of clients of different sizes and in different industries. Therefore, the telephone system is multi-platform because it can support several different campaigns for various clients at the same time. Originally, the call centre was equipped with a Nortel PABX system and the Symposium ACD to manage inbound calls. A software solution was used for outbound calls.

The need to implement an outboard calling engine led Flandre Ateliers to review its entire system. As it happened, setting up campaigns was a long, complicated process. The organization's goal was to choose a solution that could manage both inbound and outbound calls and that would be easy for supervisors to learn. Production should not require the involvement of an administrator or the IT department.

Kiamo lets the outsourcer offer new services to its clients

Many different proposals were reviewed, including Conecteo's Kiamo solution. This tool stood out right away for its ability to be easily integrated with the existing PABX and ACD. The telephone architecture already in place could be left as it was. Kiamo was also able to adapt to the specific operational requirements imposed by Flandre Ateliers. For instance, seeing-impaired agents needed precise display settings: the contrast, colours and character size had to be adjustable by the administrator or supervisor.

Other strong points included Kiamo's rich features and openness, which enabled Flandre Ateliers to offer additional services to its clients (call recording, remote agent observation, etc.) and even to customize the application.

In addition, Kiamo's user-friendliness helped users master the tool quickly and gave supervisors a high degree of autonomy.

Kiamo's scalability was quickly put to the test as, shortly after its installation, Flandre Ateliers decided to change its PABX system. The migration to a new telephone system went smoothly and was used as an opportunity to expand the use of Kiamo to cover inbound calls as well.

Today, the Flandre Ateliers call centre occupies 600 square metres of office space and employs 70 people. Using Kiamo, it provides the following services on behalf of its clients six days a week:

• Inbound calls: Appointment taking and planning, direct calls or overflow.
• Outbound calls: Progressive auto-dialler, appointment taking, informational and awareness-raising campaigns, bank account data entry, pre-collection payment reminders, file qualification, customer satisfaction surveys, questionnaires.
• Related office activities: mass mailings, back-office (bank account data entry, credits and refunds, etc.).

Between 7 and 10,000 outbound calls are handled each day for approximately twenty campaigns and seven different clients. A significant increase in the number of inbound calls is expected over the next few months as campaigns are developed. As an example, outbound call campaigns are performed on behalf of the Etablissement Français du Sang, a major national client of Flandre Ateliers, in order to schedule appointments with blood donors. These campaigns not only increase the number of donors but also make it possible to adjust blood collection resources as appropriate.

The proof in the ROI

By giving users autonomy, Kiamo frees up technological staff: "The IT Department employs only four people. Therefore, our objective was to give our users the means to work autonomously," explains Mr Dodin, IT Manager for Flandre Ateliers.

« Kiamo is much easier to use than the solutions I've tried in the past. The screens are concise, clear, and they get to the point. You can tell that they have been designed by people who understand my job. I can change a call script or implement a new campaign all by myself, », confirms Séverine Dhenry, Call Centre Manager.

« We only have to manipulate the agent's workstation one time in order to install the Agent Desktop. Agents get used to working with Kiamo very quickly. We were also able to have Conecteo adapt the Desktop to the specific needs of our seeing-impaired users, which makes the tool much easier for them to use, » remarks Mr Dodin.

« From a technological perspective, the changes and upgrades we made to the existing architecture haven't had any impact on Kiamo. The last update was done in three days: one day to prepare for the switch, one day for training, one day for start-up support and assistance. The Kiamo server hasn't suffered even a minor failure in two years. »

As Séverine Dhenry adds, « Flandre Ateliers' business is growing rapidly; revenue has increased 100% over last year. We hope to optimize the existing system before developing it further. In the meantime, we wanted to take advantage of the improvements offered by the latest version of Kiamo, and we migrated our system, without a hitch, in September of 2010. We plan to significantly increase the number of positions within our organization to keep up with the growing number of contracts that we handle. ».

About Conecteo

As a leading publisher of integrated Customer Interaction Management solutions for companies and customer contact centres, we offer our customers innovative software solutions that allow them to take charge of how relationships are handled.

By improving their responsiveness, these organizations can easily adapt to a constantly changing environment and offer their customers unparalleled service quality, distinguishing them from their competition. Conecteo is known for its practical approach to quality customer relationships—we focus on providing user-friendly solutions that are designed with the company's current and future needs in mind. Conecteo is committed to providing its customers flexibility, accessibility and cost control.

A Deloitte Technology Fast500 EMEA winner, Conecteo draws on a strong team to support its growth and sustainability. We have developed a unique area of expertise in the establishment of customer contact centres for both large corporations and government agencies in a wide variety of fields.

Companies of all sizes and types put their trust in Conecteo:

La Banque Postale, Société Générale, Arkéa Group, Amaguiz (Groupama), Lybernet Assurances (Covéa Group), Suravenir Assurances (Crédit Mutuel), Smartbox, Rentokil, Yves Rocher, Conseil Général de la Manche, Conseil Régional d'Aquitaine, Grand Lyon Habitat, Flandre Appels, Afone, Bell Benin Communications, etc.

More information : www.conecteo.fr

Press contact:

Catherine Marquèze – Marketing and Communication Director, Conecteo
+33 (0)5 47 48 33 26 – communication@conecteo.fr