Multidirect focuses on conversations rather than technology

Premier Technologies (Premier), a leading Australian supplier of contact centre solutions, has announced that Multidirect, an Australian call centre operator providing telemarketing services to Australian charities since 1992, has chosen to implement the Premier Contact Point hosted contact centre solution in its call centres throughout Western Australia.

Starting with one call centre employing 30 agents, today, Multidirect has 5 call centres employing offering flexible work hours to its 130 agents.

Multidirect’s Operations Manager, Andrew Lockyer, maintains that the organisation has grown a very successful business over the last 18 years by focusing primarily on people and process rather than technology.

“Our success in sourcing charitable supporters is founded on ensuring each and every conversation with a potential supporter is just that - a conversation,” said Lockyer. “We were concerned that interposing any form of technology, such as a dialler, that might cause supporter frustration, would reduce our success rates and negatively impact supporter attitudes.”

However, after a successful pilot program, Lockyer and the Multidirect management team were convinced the dialler technology, incorporated within Premier Contact Point, would do exactly the opposite and the organisation signed an agreement to implement Premier Technologies’ hosted contact centre solution. The solution introduced the dialler technology without the associated hardware, software and maintenance responsibilities.

“In some cases,” Lockyer reported, “we’ve significantly increased our sales per hour. Fundamentally, these outstanding results are due to increasing agents’ talk time in servicing the various charities Multidirect represents.”

“From an operational perspective, adopting a hosted solution such as Premier Contact Point allows the focus to be taken off the technology and placed squarely back on the people, skills and contact centre processes that deliver real tangible benefits to a contact centre’s bottom line,” said Premier Technologies CEO, Fausto Marasco.

He outlined why Multidirect was an ideal candidate for hosted technology. “Multidirect has centres in various locations around Australia. “With Premier Contact Point, all those centres can be managed in real-time as a single virtual centre from one central location.”

In addition, because the hosted model requires no capital expenditure, medium sized organisations like Multidirect can access enterprise-level technology at a fraction of the usual cost.

Lockyer also praised the solution for its ease of use, saying that although staff had initially been apprehensive about the introduction of a new system, they were up and running much quicker than expected.

“The training was exceptional,” said Lockyer, “and the visual nature of the user interface means that anyone can jump on as an agent and be up to speed in no time.”

“We’re particularly excited about our relationship with Multidirect,” said Marasco. “In sharing with them the experience Premier has gained in the contact centre industry over the last twenty-four years, we’re confident that we can help to drive Multidirect’s business and work with them to achieve new levels of success.”

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About Multidirect

Multi Direct is a Contact Centre leader who provides funds to charities by selling products to a supporter base through telemarketing. Money raised is provided to those charities that receive none or limited Federal Funding. Multi Direct is a family owned business that has been operating for more than 15 years with five large call centres located in Australia employing local people.

About Premier

Premier Technologies is a leading Australian supplier of contact centre solutions. Founded in 1986, Premier Technologies is wholly Australian-owned and continues to provide innovative solutions to the contact centre industry. Premier Contact Point is Premier Technologies’ hosted contact centre solution, with the application hosted at Premier’s secure data centre and supplied to customers over the internet for a subscription-based monthly fee.