In October 2009 OJSC North-West Telecom put into commercial operation the hardware and software complex of the Contact Centre in St. Petersburg, which will unite the reference and information services of all OJSC N.W. Telecom's regional branches into a single information space.

At the moment, all telephone calls of St. Petersburg subscriber s coming to the telephones of the technical support service, the repair service and the 09 and 009 information and reference services are forwarded to the single process ing platform. About 400 workstations in St. Petersburg have been connected to the new equipment and software.

The purpose of the Contact Centre of OJSC N.W.Telecom is to optimize the interaction of a communication operator with clients, and its activities include several basic functional areas:

1) Supporting the core business services (analogue of the existing technical support services and repair service ):

- technical support of users (finding out the causes of applications, solving problems and answering clients' questions arising when the services of telephone communication, broadband access to the Internet, etc. are provided);

- information on settlement s (opening balance, current payments, etc.);

- information on Company's services , current rates and marketing offers;

- telemarketing*.

2) Information and reference services:

- traditional information (09) on telephone numbers of local telephone communication network subscribers (individuals and organizations);

- chargeable information (009): providing information on the basis of incomplete data, the service of connection with a "closed" subscriber, access to various information content: from information on availability and booking of railway or air tickets to the opportunity of getting advice from a lawyer or astrologer's forecast.

3) providing access to intraareal, long-distance and international telephone communication via telephone operator, information on codes and dialing procedure for intraareal, long-distance and international communication.

The hardware and software complex of OJSC N.W. Telecom's Contact Centre performs the complete cycle of incoming call processing operations: call processing, which includes determining the calling subscriber's number; interactive processing of a call at the stage "before operator" using the IVR interactive service system**; providing primary information from databases to an operator 's workstation. The infrastructure of the solution makes it possible both to identify the causes of an application and to promptly solve the subscriber 's problem interactive ly in the process of a dialogue with a client. Information may be received by the Contact Centre from client s both by telephone and via other channels: WEB, e-mail, etc.

The Contact Centre's infrastructure that has been created supports the complex technological cycle of sales and client servicing and is integrated with OJSC N.W. Telecom's information system s making it possible to get information necessary for the servicing of a client: with the communication network service maintenance system, measurement system, single information and billing system, service activator, etc.

The fact that OJSC N.W. Telecom has a developed multiservice network will make it possible to unite the core of the Contact Centre with regional platforms without extra costs in the future, which means that operators' workstations will be created with an access to common databases and unified through business process es of client servicing will be ensured throughout the Northwestern Federal District.

The project for creating the Contact Centre is being implemented jointly with the Russia n company STEP LOGIC, which has delivered and tuned up the equipment . To create the hardware and software complex of the Contact Centre, OJSC N.W. Telecom installed hardware and software products of several suppliers, such as Avaya, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cisco, Dr.Web, Speech Technology Centre, and others. The Business Computer Centre company has acted as the system integrator.

A presentation of the new Contact Centre to journalists of the region was held on 28th October 2008, on the eve of the 7th anniversary of OJSC North-West Telecom. A tour was offered to journalists of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, during which they visited the operator rooms of the Call Centre of the St. Petersburg branch of the Company and the premises where the equipment and software supporting the work of the Contact Centre is located. Regional journalists had a chance of seeing a presentation of the up-to-date OJSC N.W. Telecom's Contact Centre using videoconferencing at a briefing held after the tour.

General Manager of OJSC N.W.Telecom Vladimir Akulich, Deputy General Manager – Sales Manager Oleg Popov and other top managers, as well as representatives of the major partner companies participating in the implementation of the project for creating OJSC N.W. Telecom's Contact Centre took part in the video briefing.

According to General Manager of OJSC N.W.Telecom Vladimir Akulich, 'The Contact Centre is a multi functional system, unique for our industry, and the future belongs to it. It has taken us 3 years and a half to design the Contact Centre, and it is only today that we have come to its implementation. The Contact Centre will make it possible to create an up-to-date "interface" between the outside world – our client s and the Company and to upgrade and optimize all business process es.'

'We have based the concept of the Contact Centre on a unified universal approach to organizing the support of our clients and on involving all links participating in the business process of client servicing in the single information and technological space. "The Single Entry Point" is a philosophy of service provision and client servicing, by following which we organize our work in such a way as to provide support to the client who applies to us using one of the service channels convenient for him and uses the accessible options: voice, e-mail, or chat. The purpose of creating the Contact Centre is to ensure the support of a high quality of the services provided and an individual approach to each client,' Deputy General Manager – Sales Manager Oleg Popov emphasized.

* Telemarketing is telephoning including both information collection and provision of information by calling.  

** Interactive Voice Response is a system of voice interaction making it possible for a subscriber to get access to information of interest to him/her by using a special voice menu by pressing the phone keys in the tone mode.