IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

10.13. Three months later

The contact centre soon moved beyond just answering FAQs. It served as a means to monitor and improve data quality: usually physicians in a hurry and used to poor service will hesitate to spend non-productive time providing their name and address details to a call-centre agent. However, with service now characterized by the phone being picked up in three rings or less, and FAQs answered within the space of 30 seconds (compared to days or weeks beforehand), callers were only to happy to show their gratitude by allowing the agent to fully check their name and address against the company's central database.

Probably the most business-sensitive use of the contact centre was the ease and speed with which the company was able to handle official communication about mad cow disease, which broke out in 1997. Whereas other companies had to frantically scramble to set up or outsource a dedicated phone number and call centre to handle queries, all that was needed was to define a number of FAQs reflecting the company's official line on the subject, and put it in the knowledge base – in literally 48 hrs.