Vision Australia sees contact centre with NSC

Vision Australia required a specialised solution to provide functionality such as; reporting; integrated access; customer service; and ease of use by staff who are blind or have low vision.

Gerard Menses, CEO at Vision Australia, said the number of people who are blind or have low vision is doubling and it presents a real challenge for Vision Australia to meet the increased demand for services in the future.

"We needed to find a solution that would enable us to continue to provide the best possible service to Australians who are blind or have low vision," he said.

NSC offered Vision Australia Avaya's S8500 Media Servers, IP handsets, voicemail, Avaya Elite Call Centre (CCE) software, Avaya CMS Call Centre Reporting & Administration, MessageManager Fax server and Verint Impact 360 Voice Recording.

Also included on the technology list was; Avaya G250; G350; and G450 media gateways, located in remote sites and linked to the head office site via Vision Australia's existing data network.

The Avaya technology was implemented across two main sites - the national contact centre in Enfield and Vision Australia's head office in the Melbourne suburb of Kooyong.

Craig Neil, CEO at NSC said CCE software was used to manage multi-media routing ensuring all those who contact Vision Australia receive a fast response to their queries.

In addition, the integrator used Avaya Universal Application Phone Status (UAPS) software on the Avaya handsets.

"This takes all information normally viewed on a telephone handset and converts it to speech without the use of a screen reading application," said Neil.

"As a result, contact centre staff were able to maintain high levels of efficiency as they can continue working on their desktop while attending to customer calls."

He said members of the NSC Vision Australia team recently underwent an induction session to experience what it would be like to be blind or have low vision.

"It was extremely enlightening to have a glimpse of some of the daily challenges faced by people who are blind and it definitely helped the team with the solution design and deployment," said Neil.