References

Meyene GmbH is an IT development company based in Munich, Germany. Founded in 1991, they currently offer their customers all kinds of innovative solutions, from online stores to database systems.

Creating the Call Center system was a project Meyene GmbH decided to outsource, and they chose Web Space Station^® as an outsource service provider that met the company's strict requirements.

Call Center was intended for a mobile phone service dealer company that major German mobile phone service providers supplied with the information on their customers. The dealer company offered these customers services in extending their contracts. Receiving, processing, and issuing information needed to be properly arranged and automated as much as it was possible.

After Call Center was basically deployed, an additional task appeared: the dealer company decided to implement a multilevel marketing system for attracting new customers, and a corresponding functionality had to be developed and integrated with Call Center.

On our client's request, we used ASP/JavaScript was the programming of the Intranet system and form processing, and JavaScript programming - for the form validation. The Call Center system was built on the Windows NT Server 4.0 platform.

A major problem that we faced when we started implementing the project was arranging the continuity of the agents' work. We proposed a solution that made it possible to process the contract information as call queuing which allowed an agent to start working with another customer's data immediately after the work on the previous customer's data is over.

Another problem that we had to solve was finding a fast and inexpensive way to have PDF forms generated and printed out. We have worked out two solutions to this problem:

• one-page contract forms are generated based on a PDF template with placeholders;
• multipage forms are generated based on a PostScript template using Aladdin Ghostscript. This method is faster than using some ActiveX components, and it eliminates the problem of creating multipage forms.

We have successfully implemented the project and built a comprehensive intranet system for importing, validating, storing, and issuing the information on the old, current, and new contracts signed by the customers of mobile phone service providers, as well as the information that is necessary to negotiate and prepare such contracts. Mobile phone service providers supply information stored in files with the *.csv file name extension. This information is imported into Call Center via a specially developed interface and processed so each customer can be identified by a unique number. Four months before a contract expires, Call Center relocates the proper entry to the queue that is used by the agents responsible for working with customers. The agents call the potential customers to find out whether they are willing to extend their contracts using the company's service for that. An agent edits the entry based on whether it was possible to contact a customer and on the results of the conversation. If a customer could not be reached, his/her entry will return to the queue later on; if the conversation was successful, and a meeting with the customer was arranged, the agent enters all the related information in the Call Center database. All scheduled meetings are placed in plans for the company's interviewers. Every interviewer is supplied with contracts that customers are supposed to sign. The built-in Call Center contract generating mechanism is easy-to use, and it allows an agent to prepare and print our a contract in no time. After a contract is signed, all the related information is added to the Call Center database and also transferred to the proper mobile phone service provider. One of the major advantages of Call Center is that it allows for further extension. This is why it was easy for us to add a new feature to the system on the request of our client in order to fully support the new multilevel marketing trend. This feature lets agents enter and process information on potential customers and calculate the award fee paid to the customers who reported the names of those who signed new contracts.