EPRO TELECOM Contributed Significant Values to Hong Kong Housing Authority on Housing Department Integrated Communication center (HDICC) Project

Project Overview

EPRO TELECOM was appointed by Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) in mid-2003 to perform Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) on existing Housing Department (HD) Enquiry Hotlines, HD call center and IT Sub-division Helpdesk Hotline.

This “Housing Department Integrated Communication center (HDICC)” project required the provision of an advance Communication center System platform with integration of Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), Knowledgebase (K-base) and related programs to provide housing information and fax-on-demand features through IVR, maintained K-base for efficient enquiry and complaint handling in multi-channels (phone, fax and email), and to keep close monitor on case handling progress for 5 years.

Background Information of HA

The 4th largest Hong Kong government bureaus among 61 government departments - Own around 300 estate offices throughout Hong Kong with over 8000 staffs in operations.- Serve around 600 thousands families with 2 millions citizens in Hong Kong - Have a heavy daily workload in supporting citizens’ enquiries.

Problems before cooperating with EPRO

1) Inflexible and non user-friendly Interactive Voice Response system (IVRS)
2) Limited features of IVRS lead to overloaded call center
3) No integrated platform linking IVRS, K-base and related programs, resulted in easy loss of caller information and
    unrecorded talk time.
4) Callers' enquiries could not be efficiently responded
5) Agents lack of support to provide quality and efficient services.
6) No quality control measures and formal process and procedures for agents to follow
7) Lacks of reports and measurement.
8) Outdated FAQ and manuals with poor service support.
All these resulted in the decline of service quality and overall customer satisfaction.

Ride on the solid experience in managing different nature and scale of outsourcing call center programs for our clients, Epro successfully integrated IVRS, call center, and helpdesk for HA into one platform within a very short time.

Before carrying out the features development, Epro performed the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) cooperating with Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC). The objective was to review the current key processes of the Housing Department hotlines operation, to identify the existing or potential problems in services quality and work efficiency. Then, Epro provided recommendations to improve business operations workflow efficiency, such as to integrate helpdesk features (phone, fax and email communication) on the same platform to provide more statistics on enquiry handling, installing a flexible IVR system to provide fax-on-demand and self-help features for generating statistics for analysis; to reduce the volume of outgoing calls by automated processes in case escalation and case follow up etc. Recommendations on quality improvement were made also, e.g. to redefine service pledges, to evaluate and monitor helpdesk performance, to set up mechanism for vendor to transfer escalated case status and solution update, and to generate sufficient reports for analysis, etc.

Experts from HKPC then site visited around 300 estates offices to review the existing HD enquiry hotlines, call center and IT sub-division helpdesk hotline. Within 8 to 10 weeks, HKPC experts studied the operation workflow and carried out gap analysis in which the differences between existing workflow and designed workflow were analyzed for finding out the impact of the integration, timing and cost-effectiveness of implementation.

System Development and Management of HDICC by EPRO

IVR functions

In the implementation stage, Epro deployed IVR module of Epro-owned WISE-xb call center solution. With the WISE-xb IVRS, callers can follow the pre-defined call flow into the IVR system, programmed to provide voice guidance for callers to access different enquiry topics and take corresponding actions based on the programmed instructions. Moreover, the IVRS owns capacity to pre-record at least 2,200 pieces of voice messages from a few seconds to a few minutes in length, music-on-hold feature, and voice mail function for callers to leave voice mails for call back request.

Multi-media Universal Queuing system

WISE-xb platform helps to handle multi-media incoming service requests through telephone, fax and e-mail with the universal queuing system.

Outsourcing & Secondment services of EPRO support 24/7 HA hotline

A number of HA’s agents are outsourced to Epro's call center to handle external enquiries while some agents are located in HA‘s headquarters as secondment to support the helpdesk and serve HA internally. HDICC operates as an Integrated Communication center with the capacity of over 180 data/ telephone lines and operating on 24 hours a day and 7 days a week basis supported by call center agents as well as virtual telephone services through IVRS.

Customized programs built on top of WISE-xb platform

The IT helpdesk system is a flexible platform in providing self-service and fax-on-demand features through IVR, maintaining K-base for efficient enquiry handling and closely monitoring case handling progress. Functions of the IT helpdesk include escalation of cases to appropriate parties for follow-up, monitoring of outstanding cases, users' advices on HD's procedures, information provision such as enriching the K-base, compiling performance review reports for continuous improvement of the helpdesk, etc.

Epro provides all IT helpdesk hardware and software e.g. servers, PCs, IVRS, remote access terminal applications, as well as essential manpower of agents, supervisor, which saves HA’s time cost and human resources.

Benefits Brought by EPRO