The telephone sales center, completely operated by Cremer,
started with six operators, 30 telephone lines, and six attention terminals. The
system operated with Lucent technology, and was managed through a CRM system
called ISO Gesac, developed with GeneXus by ISO Enterprise.
"ISO Gesac is an extremely efficient tool for organizing
the type of telemarketing sales campaign that Cremer had decided to put in
place," wrote Hutt and Speh in their book "Business Marketing Management: A
Strategic View of Industrial and Organizational Markets." ISO Gesac enables
users to query the data bank to obtain, for instance, information about a
population of dentists from Bela Vista, a neighborhood in the capital city of
Sao Paulo, who spend more than 200 reais a month worth of materials.
But Cremer also had another challenge: it had to be as
efficient in its new way of relating to its clients -who were used to the
person-to-person interaction with distributors- as before so that there would be
no doubt for them that company management had actually improved. This meant that
in the second contact with a client or potential client, operators had to have
access to the client's history at Cremer. They had to know when the last
purchase had been made, what had been bought, the type of order, etc. "That was
one of the advantages provided by the ISO Gesac system." With the client's
telephone number and the incorporation of a call-screening device in the
terminal, the calling client's file was displayed on the operator's screen
before the call was picked up.
To make everything work perfectly, the operator had to
have access to information about available stock. For this, ISO Gesac had to
connect with the factory's management system (BPCS) from the call center. This
was made possible through a custom development by ISO Enterprise Informática and
SSA.
"The objective was to improve customer service so as to
impress them, avoid conflicts generated by the system change, and look for more
clients." The sophistication of the system meant a 6-to-3-minute reduction in
the average attention time, and thus a productivity increase.
The call center "became the nervous system of the
commercial operation, and its development reflected the company's activity
growth;" the number of calls sky-rocketed from 2,850 answered by 6 operators, to
150,000 answered by 180 operators. The system started by shyly expanding net
sales, on a monthly basis, which rose from R$ 133,000 in December 1999, to R$ 4
million per month, one year later.