Quality Contacts over Steam-connect

Quality Contacts is a full service facility contact center and one of the medium-sized players in the industry. They facilitate incoming and outgoing customer contacts via telephone and internet for Praxis, ZiggoVodafone, Engie and many more other well-known brands. Quality Contacts has grown into a complete service provider of facility customer contact services. “We are a call center and the majority of our business consists of inbound orders. For example, we provide customer service for a number of very nice companies and then, in addition to incoming call traffic, we also have to deal with e-mail handling, web care and chat”, says Gijsbert van der Meulen, director of Quality Contacts.

Depending on the current projects, 400-500 employees work at Quality Contacts. “The number of active employees strongly depends on the current campaigns. In addition to structural campaigns, we also accept periodic assignments. When this period has ended, we scale down in the hours,” says Kitty Vermeer, Manager Sales and Marketing at Quality Contacts. For six months, Quality Contacts has been managing a large part of its customer contact orders in customer contact platform Steam-connect. “We are currently in the final phase of the migration process,” said Kitty.

Previously, they worked with a system that did have more functionalities and options for inbound and outbound telephony settings, but which also required considerable IT capacity to keep everything running. “It doesn’t matter that you have to have more IT capacity available, as long as it yields at least as much,” explains Gijsbert. “If not, it’s better to remove a few buttons and opt for a system that is easier to manage.”

Choice

Gijsbert himself has gained a lot of experience in the past with call center software from various suppliers. “When a package had to be selected, the choice was on Steam-connect because we feel that Steam-connect is going to develop better and faster. The pace at which Steam-connect updates and new functionalities follow each other is high.” Kitty adds: “Support was an issue with our previous supplier and therefore a spearhead when selecting a new system. We feel that Steam-connect is closer to the ball here.

We also looked at whether Steam-connect met the current wishes and requirements of our clients. We also looked at the possibilities for further expansion and the possibilities for integrating different channels with each other. You can do all that in Steam-connect. Some clients also have ISO certification requirements. The fact that Steam-connect is ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified is a bonus.”

Flexibility

Quality Contacts also works with a large team of home workers. These employees handle the in-outbound telephony from home. Gijsbert indicates that there are technically no restrictions with Steam-connect. “The convenience of just a simple system, a platform that works and what people quickly understand.”

“What I also like is that, compared to our previous system, there are a lot of standard reports, scoreboards and live views in Steam-connect. Previously, we had to program a lot ourselves to get certain information from the system.” Quality Contacts uses these reports to manage the organization and to feed back results to its clients. “Thanks to the customer portal that is easy to set up, our clients can quickly listen to conversations and immediately see the results of a campaign. Being close to the results is always important in our business.”

Tips for other call centers

Due to the size of the company, Quality Contacts is not your typical Steam-connect customer. Gijsbert indicates that smaller call and contact centers can work excellently with Steam-connect. “When smaller call contact centers have to choose between two systems, Steam-connect gives them more bang for your buck.” For call centers of a similar size to Quality Contacts, it’s a different story. “I would definitely recommend Steam-connect to larger call centers for consideration as well. You should keep in mind that you still need to deploy the necessary IT capacity.

The challenge with larger call centers is that you have to deal with a lot of inbound, inbound and outbound blending, different clients, campaigns and a diversity of employee skills. It’s all possible in Steam-connect, but more settings are needed. In addition, larger call centers also have a greater need for extensive manuals and tutorials. Another important theme to pay attention to is stability. For us, with a relatively large amount of inbound work, that is more important than for outbound call centers.”

Plan

Although the implementation of Steam-connect has not yet been completed, Quality Contacts is already thinking about the next steps. Recently, for example, the use of integrated workforce management and time registration has been discussed. “We would also like to take this up with Steam-Connet, and we’re going to talk about this. In addition, we are looking to implement quality management via Steam-connection. On the one hand to comply with all laws and regulations and on the other hand to integrate the agent tracking system into Steam-connect, so that you can log and monitor the development of an employee. We prefer to do this as much as possible from one system”.

Frame of reference

“We are very happy with a customer like Quality Contacts”, says Dennis Schabracq, director of Steam-connect. “Quality Contacts is a leading call center with a diverse customer portfolio that Steam-connect is proud to serve. That they are enthusiastic about Steam-connect is a signal to other call centers and clients who want to have the software under their own management. Quality Contacts is a very nice frame of reference to convince other call centers that Steam-connect is also the right solution for them.”