Fujitsu wins major call centre award for third consecutive year

The CompuServe Pacific Contact Centre operated by Fujitsu Australia has won first place in the "Media/Communication" category of the Teleperformance CRM Grand Prix 2001 Awards (Asia Pacific Region).

This is the third year in a row that CompuServe Pacific and Fujitsu have won this award, beating other Australian competitors such as Optusnet, connect.com.au, OzEmail, News Limited, and Fairfax.

Companies were judged on a variety of pre-determined scenarios designed to evaluate the quality of call-handling, including:

• The speed with which each call is answered
• The quality of the greeting
• The level of product knowledge displayed
• The ability to listen effectively
• The overall `warmth of welcome' during the call

Peter Seymour, General Manager Enterprise Services at Fujitsu said: "We are thrilled to win this award for the third year in a row. It is a tribute to all our dedicated staff at the Contact Centre who work so hard at providing the highest level of personal service."

The CompuServe Pacific Contact Centre, based in North Ryde, NSW, has been successfully operated by Fujitsu for over 10 years.

The services provided to CompuServe Pacific form part of Fujitsu's i-Support Contact Centre portfolio of services specifically tailored for Internet Service Providers. The i-Support portfolio is one of the many End User support services Fujitsu offers under its global InfraCareTM services brand.

CompuServe Inc. is an online service and information provider with three million subscribers worldwide, and wholly owned by the world's largest ISP, America Online. There are over 12,000 CompuServe Pacific customers resident in Australia, New Zealand, and ASEAN countries who, together with the significant number of CompuServe members travelling through the region from other countries, are supported through the Fujitsu-run Contact Centre.

The Teleperformance CRM Grand Prix (previously known as the Teleperformance Grand Prix) was created in 1988 by Teleperformance, the multimedia contact centre division of SR.Teleperformance, a global telemarketing and teleservices company.

This year's testing specifically took into account the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) component, recognising that good customer management is about empowering customers and prospects - allowing them to make contact with you wherever, whenever and however they choose.

It measures the standards of service offered by companies over distance (telephone, email and Web interactivity) and recognises those who set the benchmark. In order to judge the CRM Grand Prix, Teleperformance made over 3,000 'mystery shopper' contacts to 120 companies throughout Australia.