SOURCE: Target Wire

(Wokingham, UK) — At G-Force London, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel-Lucent company (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), recognised Ladbrokes, the world-leading provider of interactive betting and gaming services, as one of the world’s leading customer service organisations. Ladbrokes was selected from more than 240 applicants as a recipient of the second annual 2007 Genesys Customer Innovation Awards.

Using technology innovatively to streamline and optimise customer service, Ladbrokes partnered with Genesys to transform its customer contact centre into a Dynamic Contact Centre (DCC), increasing customer satisfaction and improving the contact centre's alignment with company business goals. Finalists strive to provide excellent customer service through the innovative use of technology in highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, the DCC showcases how customer service can be elevated to a strategic business asset designed to increase overall customer loyalty and business value. A DCC stops customer frustration, drives contact centre efficiencies and accelerates business innovation.

"The goal of the awards programme is to recognise the world’s most dynamic contact centre environments," said Wes Hayden, president and CEO, Genesys. "Ladbrokes has strategically leveraged the Genesys suite of contact centre solutions to achieve an optimal balance of customer traffic, internal resources and business outcomes. The most universal common thread among all of the innovators is the ability to link business issues to customer service, achieve optimisation and treat the contact centre as a strategic opportunity."

The company began working with Genesys in 2005, when it set out to simplify its customer contact process. Ladbrokes integrated its two contact centre sites in Liverpool and London using the Genesys Customer Interaction Suite that leverages the Genesys Voice Platform and Workforce Management technologies. The technology allows Ladbrokes to route customers the agent best suited to assist them, and to optimise staffing levels at various call volumes.

As a result of the implementation, Ladbrokes has improved customer service by consistently reducing call times, and handling higher volumes of calls with fewer agents. After using Genesys technology for more than 18 months, Ladbrokes' business has continued to grow because of increased agent productivity and a consistently high level of service.

"We have deployed Genesys technology to improve business processes in response to continuously changing customer demands," said Liam Hennessy, Head of Call Centre, Ladbrokes. "And, as an extra side benefit of technology, the focus of management's work has shifted to more marketing and customer relationship management activities and significantly less on performance issues. Now, Ladbrokes can focus on the internal processes that will make calls even more efficient and increase customer satisfaction further."

In defining its DCC vision, Genesys looked at the global customer service leaders among the 4,000 companies currently using its software. Genesys recognised that customers have started to deploy elements of the DCC vision today, based on key capabilities. Genesys created the Genesys Customer Innovation Awards to recognise those customers who are already making strides towards creating DCCs. The programme also enables sharing of experiences among the Genesys customer community.

Ladbrokes presented to a panel of analyst judges during the semi-finals at the Genesys Analyst Conference, held in San Francisco in January 2007. It attained perfect scores in several of the 17 scoring criteria, including efficiency, financial performance and customer satisfaction. Ladbrokes received recognition at G-Force London.