BT Openreach division expands services deal with Infosys to improve support for engineers

BT Openreach has expanded its contract with Indian services giant Infosys to add an extra 1,000 call centre agents to a platform that provides support staff with the information they need in one place.

Openreach, which is the infrastructure division of BT, will now have 5,000 front and back-office call centre agents in what it calls “the Seamless Desktop project”.  This uses a software platform, from Infosys company EdgeVerve Systems, known as AssistEdge.

By using the platform – which integrates information from different systems – support staff will have all the information they need when engineers call in from the field.

BT Openreach said the platform had reduced call-handling times by 20%, and login times from up to 20 minutes to a single sign-on that takes less than a minute. It has also halved the time it takes to train agents, from six months to three months.

Alan Hall, director at Openreach, said the extension of the system’s use was an easy decision. “Over 5,000 people in over 50 centres are now able to provide our customers and engineers with a much improved service.”

“This has saved us money, automated tedious tasks and enabled us to improve management planning,” he added. “We know the calls are shorter and the operational processes are faster and – while we don’t measure the tone of voice – I’d say customers and engineers are a fair bit happier too.”

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly used in business processes such as contact centres.

Suppliers such as Infosys, that have grown rapidly through the provision of low-cost labour delivering IT and business process outsourced services, are increasingly moving into automation and AI through the development and acquisition of technology.

For example, fellow Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services recently won a deal with Nationwide Building Society which will use its ignio neural automation system, initially designed for batch performance and capacity management, to automate its IT and business processes.