“We recently moved to larger premises to facilitate the growth the business has made in the past five years. The reservations service arm of the Association increased its capability to do business and we needed a call management solution to compliment that,” said Debbie
Shaddock, Manager of Mansfield-Mount Buller Regional Tourism Association Limited.

Agent 99 is a cost-effective, flexible customer contact solution that combines phone, email, live web chat, and customer records together in an easy-to-use browser interface. Because it is delivered via the internet, Agent 99 requires no hardware, no software, just a web browser and a phone line.

Agent 99 is an intelligent solution for businesses like Mount Buller as it requires no capital expenditure, just a pay-for-use monthly fee, plus it has the flexibility of being able to up or downscale depending on the seasonal tourism based call volume requirements.

The growth within Australia’s call centre market is expected to be driven by SMEs and the current take-up of Agent 99 is testament to this. This leading-edge technology will pave the way for SMEs to participate in an environment where one third of all new call centre seats will be hosted.

According to NEC Australia’s National Business Development Manager for Contact Centres, Gary Lowe, the introduction of this affordable big business technology for small business operators heralds a new era of customer service capability traditionally unavailable to the SME market.

”NEC’s delivery of this Agent 99 hosted service, provides customers with an additional level of flexibility because of its carrier and vendor independence, which suits city and regional operators alike. It now becomes feasible to deploy contact centre seats into the smaller
regional communities, thereby providing employment and improving regional community wealth”

The Director of Continuity Design, Alan McKay, said Agent 99 was an exceptionally good service for organisations with small to medium-size call centres such as Mansfield-Mount Buller Tourism Association. It provides these organisations with a full suite of contact centre technology services without the expensive outlay required to purchase systems outright. It can be deployed rapidly, does not require internal IT expertise and is ideal for stand-alone operations and for organisations establishing disaster recovery solutions due to its broad accessibility via the web.

Lowe predicts Agent 99 has the potential to offset the exodus of call centre investment in Australia and help create new and sustainable business and employment in the Australian market.

“Our expectation is that the technology will produce an environment of confidence for Australian SMEs by providing customer service to match that of large enterprises.

“The savings and competitive advantage for the SME market will be so significant small business operators will soon realise the positive reinvestment implications this has for their business,” he said.