Golf travel company deploys contact centre system

Aspect Software has been selected to implement a
full multi-media contact centre infrastructure at Golfbreaks.com

With a worldwide market of £10 billion, golf tourism is growing in popularity amongst people of all nationalities and ages, causing it to become a competitive playground for tour operators. Golf travel company Golfbreaks.com has selected Aspect to transform its customer service operation to meet increasing demand and improve the booking process for customers – without increasing personnel resources.

As a supplier of golfing holidays, tours, breaks and casual tee times to UK golfers, the company has experienced 13 years of rapid and consecutive growth since its inception in 1998. Their previous communications infrastructure was unable to fully support its long-term business goals and provide enough flexibility to develop the way it interacts with its customers. In order to integrate its bespoke, in-house customer relationship management (CRM) system, web chat, voice calls and email (via Microsoft Lync) into one streamlined system, Golfbreaks.com selected Aspect – in collaboration with partner, Dell – to implement its Aspect Unified IP v7 and workforce optimisation applications for all 120 staff at the Windsor-based contact centre.

“With more customers than ever booking with us, we required a way to meet the challenge without increasing headcount, and to do more with less,” comments Steve Hemsworth, Managing Director at Golfbreaks.com. “Our customer service is why people keep coming back to us, but as demand increased, the lack of channel integration was putting a strain on our agents and systems, increasing administration time. Customer preferences for the way they contact us are changing, as are the times at which they choose to contact us. We have already extended our opening hours by more than 30%, hopefully the new support for SMS and email – as well as integration with our CRM system – will make booking with us easier and quicker than ever.”

Aspect’s voice technology has already gone live, with CRM, web chat, email, call recording and blended interaction for agents handling multiple channels due to go live in the next six months.

Hemsworth adds: “We expect to see a quick return on investment. Since we are not increasing any personnel resources there are other benefits, including reduced average call handling times, which naturally brings down the cost per interaction, especially when combined with cheaper channels such as email.”

Aspect has also provided Golfbreaks.com with a software developer’s kit and full training in Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, including call recording, for secure handling of customer credit card details.

Steve Boakes, Channels and Partner Manager at Aspect comments: “The project timescale for voice implementation was 12 weeks, but the teams completed full voice integration within 8.5 weeks and well within budget. This is a testament to both the Aspect and Dell teams – as well as the professionalism of Golfbreaks.com in putting the system into operational service – and we expect similarly efficient schedules for the next phase of the project.”