About GfK
GfK is one of the world’s leading market research companies, with several thousand interviewers around the world, based both in call centers and at home.
The requirements
“Following the successful global deployment of our one-network approach, it was clear we needed a SIP-based dialer that could be deployed globally utilising its new infrastructure.”
said David Dobson, GfK Global Operations & Infrastructure Director.
The Sytel solution
The Sytel platform was selected, providing a flexible approach whereby local needs were harmonised and a single Sytel dialer could be housed within GfK’s centralised global hub with each contact center site having its own telephony server.
Dobson added:
“The big benefit is the ability to launch calls locally as required, without compromising expensive global bandwidth. Interoperability between the Sytel core and the local in-country Media Server is achieved via very light, low-impact control traffic.”
The result
Describing the impact for GfK, Dobson explained:
“Our new system reduces running costs in several ways. Firstly, it enables local PSTN access for each country, so our interviewers on global projects are in effect making local calls, significantly reducing call costs over our previous system.”
“Secondly centralisation means that we don’t need trained IT staff in every country in which we have a presence. As all component parts of Sytel platform can be virtualised, our rollout team in Germany has been able to rapidly deploy Media Servers in multiple countries.”
In conclusion:
“The Sytel platform has achieved certification by both our Computer Aided Telephony Interviewing (CATI) software provider, and our global network vendor. This gives us peace of mind that whether we set up a local access point in Paris or Kuala Lumpur, the Sytel dialer will work out-of-the-box with the surrounding infrastructure.”
“And as an extra benefit the Sytel platform stood out for us because the predictive dialler component gives a much greater boost in interviewer productivity over progressive dialing than any other dialler we have used or considered. Greater productivity keeps our customers happy and gives us an immediate return on investment.”
Sytel CEO Michael McKinlay commented:
“As well as the unbeatable interviewer talk time our dialer provides, we offer a ‘concurrent usage’ licensing model. This allows GfK to share their licenses across the globe, so as one country finishes a shift, another can start, using the same licenses. It gives them global calling for a fraction of the license cost of other systems.”
