Telenet and NextiraOne modernise voice portals for German banking applications

Munich, 14 February, 2008. NextiraOne and Telenet, who have been working closely as partners since 2007, have now implemented a third voice portal for the banking sector. The banks involved in this project provide services such as stock brokerage, bank transfers or account details over the telephone in order to cater to customers who do not have an internet connection available. The trend for more expansion, the rising number of call traffic and the wish to deliver premium service to customers motivated the financial service providers to radically change and modernise their telecommunications infrastructure and telephone banking systems. As general contractor, NextiraOne selected Telenet as their partner for installing and configuring the IVR systems as well as for the development and integration of the voice dialogues with the company’s backend systems.

Up until recently, customers of the three banks involved in the project, were offered a comfortable and easy means of carrying out their banking transactions. They were able to buy and sell stocks as well as inquiring into their account and depot balance at any time, day and night. As a reaction to a substantial rise in caller traffic anticipated by the financial service providers, they wished to ensure that their customers would be able to avail of a reliable service without technical problems or delays. As part of an integral modernisation of their company’s telecommunications infrastructure, obsolete IVR systems were replaced by a modern, high-performance voice dialogue platform. In the first two projects, Genesys Voice Platform (GVP) with Voice-over-IP was the platform of choice while in the third project Genesys Voice Genie was chosen. Telenet installed and configured the new systems and integrated them into the Contact Center routing system. Telenet then migrated the existing services to the new systems deploying modern web technology such as VoiceXML and Java. Telenet developed a Java-based framework for voice applications for the creation of new voice dialogues. This framework facilitates the fast and efficient programming of standards-compliant and dynamic voice dialogues. Combined with Genesys Enterprise Routing the dialogues achieve precise routing of calls to suitable agents first time. Connecting the services with the complex backend systems that are used by the financial service providers as well as the tight integration into the workflow ensure customer-friendly caller contact with the agent. As soon as a call is put through, agents are provided with all available customer data on their screens to enable them to help directly and quickly. Telenet’s team of developers worked in close cooperation with their partners at the financial institutes and with the experts from NextiraOne and ensured a high level of quality despite the substantial deadline pressure. Thanks to extensive statistical data all three financial institutes were able to supervise and optimise the course of every interaction.

Due to the modernisation of systems and technologies, the new telephone banking systems have now been equipped to cater for the rising caller traffic at the call centres. Moreover, the systems’ basic features allow the adaptation of services to suit future requirements. “With the modernisation, the banks took an important step towards promoting the loyalty of existing and future customers. Only reliable services with optimum functions can ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty,”  Jörg Emonts, Managing Director of Telenet GmbH Kommunikationssysteme explains. “Market experts have predicted that telephone self-service will become more important. Therefore, it is crucial to provide services with maximum comfort for end users”, Axel Schnell, Chief Operating Officer of NextiraOne adds. For him, the current projects show  “how a well-conceived approach to communication services can support business processes and significantly improve the quality of communication”.