Under the new agreement, valued at approximately $1 million over two years with an option for a further one year extension, Datacom maintains responsibility for AusIndustry’s information hotline and assistance with first-level help desk functions from its North Ryde contact centre facility.

AusIndustry is the Australian Government’s business program delivery division in the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources and provides a range of incentives to support business innovation.

AusIndustry delivers a range of 27 grants, small business services, tax and duty concessions, industry sector support, and venture capital products to more than 10,000 businesses every year. Under the new contract, Datacom maintains accountability for the department’s inbound customer enquiry and fulfilment services.

This involves answering customers’ queries on the various AusIndustry products, re-directing customers to AusIndustry’s customer service managers as required and assisting with first-level help desk support, including handling technical queries and assisting customers to navigate appropriate areas on AusIndustry’s website.

Furthermore, the contract includes provision of monthly outbound customer satisfaction surveys to identify opportunities for enhancing service.

This reflects AusIndustry’s commitment to driving continuous improvement in its performance standards, as well as consistently meeting its Customer Service Charter.

Underpinning Datacom’s technical solution is a custom-developed CRM platform which is self-administered by AusIndustry, and the deployment of a web-enabled access portal derived directly from call centre PABX reports.

This allows AusIndustry 24x7 real-time remote access to operational metrics, to enable it to scale its customer support team in response to call volumes.

AusIndustry’s previous hotline services agreement with Datacom, which ran from 1999 until December 2004, saw Datacom handle more than 120,000 customer enquiries.

Under the terms of this agreement, AusIndustry was mandated to undertake an extensive open tender review on the completion of the contract.

Key to Datacom’s success in the rigorous open tender evaluation was the scale of its deployable resources to meet current and anticipated future call volumes, and its track record of meeting high performance standards.

Chris Butler, General Manager, of AusIndustry’s Business Development Branch, said, “During the past five years, Datacom has consistently answered 95% of all our incoming enquiries within 10 seconds, and has achieved a caller abandonment rate of less than 5%.

This is an impressive result made even more compelling by Datacom’s proven support of our commitment to continuous improvement.

“Datacom’s proven ability to meet our stringent service-level requirements, high degree of technical expertise, and clear understanding of our needs, helped us deciding they were the best choice to assist us in servicing the needs of Australia’s innovative businesses.” Michael Browne, Chief Executive Officer, Datacom, adds, “We are delighted that, following an open tender process, AusIndustry has selected Datacom as its contact centre partner of choice.

We have worked hard to provide AusIndustry with what is considered to be world’s best level contact centre and technical help desk services, people and skills.

“We believe AusIndustry’s decision to renew our contract confirms the quality of our services, and we look forward to continuing to partner with AusIndustry in the years ahead,” he concludes.