12 Apr 2011 -- Bahrain's national carrier Gulf Air has introduced a new technology for its Worldwide Contact Centre (WWCC) offering multiple functionality and real-time service to customers.

This is in line with its continuous strive towards providing better and a more efficient service to customers, said a statement from the Bahraini carrier.

After a complete review of the present and future requirements of Gulf Air’s contact centre, to provide better service and increasing geographical coverage with advanced capabilities, the management evaluated various global call centre technologies and chose Avaya to provide the technology, the statement added.

CEO Samer Majali said the introduction of this new technology is part of Gulf Air’s overall business strategy that focuses on network, fleet, products and cost that aims at providing a wholesome travel experience to customers.

'The Gulf Air WWCC is our key customer touch point and it is important for us not just to maintain our service reputation and consistency, but to continue to offer improved and more efficient services to our customers through the constant upgrading of our support systems,' he remarked

'The new technology is highly reliable and reflects our commitment to provide a high level of service that we have committed to our customers,' he added.

Gulf Air acting director of Information Technology, Dr Jassim Haji, who was driving the project from concept to implementation, said "It is imperative that technology empowers business and it is business critical for any customer-oriented organization like Gulf Air to have a sound technological infrastructure in place."

"Therefore, we went in for an extensive analysis and evaluation to consider a new cost-effective technology solution that can support our present as well as future requirements which can be located in Bahrain and fully controlled by Gulf Air; the new technology solution fitted in with our requirements from all aspects," he added.

The new unified technology offers several technical, cost and above all, customer service benefits; technically, it allows the WWCC operational team to respond to customers in real-time without any interruption and offers a scalable platform to add more services such as Iterative Voice Recognition (IVR) and multiple functionality in the near future.

Cost-wise, the technology not only reduces the operational cost considerably but also the return on investment made in this new technology is just about three years.

Most importantly, it significantly increases productivity; the contact centre agents will now be able to serve customers faster and more efficiently from as many as 20 countries, which will be extended to cover the entire Gulf Air network of destinations soon, it added.

Located at Gulf Air Muharraq Headquarters and staffed entirely by Bahrainis, the contact centre operates round-the-clock helping customers with their travel needs such as ticket booking, fare enquiries, hotel bookings, changing travel plans, and any other special requests.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.tradearabia.com