HP to establish multi-channel call centre for Saudi Electricity Co

The 6 month long project commenced in February, earlier this year and is expected to be fully active by August 2005.

Both Ali Saleh Al Barak, VP Distributions and customer care and Abdulsalam Al Youmni, VP Public Relations and Shareholders at Saudi Electricity commented on the strategic importance of this project for Saudi electricity and its transformation to be customer oriented; "Our primary objective was to consolidate our numerous contact centres spread across the various regions of Saudi Arabia, and build a centralised Call Centre and Customer Interaction platform to better serve our customers.

"There are increasing options and means of communications for our customers to interact and conduct business with us, said Mr. Al-Barak, - and this includes, personal interaction, through the telephone, through the internet, with new devices and new media becoming available all the time, we had to be able to give our customers an ever-increasing range of contact options, that are highly effective with ooptimal performance and low total cost of ownership." Mr. Al-Barak explained.

"We were convinced that establishing a Multi-channel Call Centre and Interaction Centre was the best way to manage our rapidly growing customer interaction needs", Mr. Ali Al-Barak said, after through studies and analysis we concluded that this state-of-art solution based on the latest and proven technology is the ideal solution that can meet today's requirements and will scale to meet future demands and requirements. "We have selected HP to implement this solution, as has proven record at world wide level of implementing similar solutions,' he added.

HP's Multi-channel Interaction Centre solution is based on Cisco technology whereas HP as Cisco Advance Technology Partner will integrate email, chat, and web-collaboration as well as incorporate IP Telephony, IVR, CTI, CRM and fax integration. HP will design, implement, integrate, and manage the project, and will also offer support services thereafter; HP is collaborating closely with the its local partner, Jeraisy in the implementation of this solution.

Commenting on the roll-out, Abdullah Al-Mohaisen, Saudi Arabia Country Managing Director, "Our experience proves that large establishments like Saudi Electricity Co is in a position to realize high level of return on investment through implementing technically advanced solutions, that will enable Saudi Electricity capitalize on the market development and effectively adapt to the rapid market changes, which has become the norm in today's business environment.

Saudi Electricity continue to chart its aggressive expansion plans to address the market development and demand, it is of prime importance for the company to implement and utilize high effective and advanced technical solutions; and HP plays a major role in localizing information technology solutions, and providing the Saudi market with state-of-art technical solutions.'