Kiwibank has spent several hundred thousand dollars upgrading its rapidly-growing Wellington call centre with an Internet protocol telephony system.

The contact centre started with 18 employees when the bank was founded in 2002 and now has a total staff of 91.

The Cisco IPPC system, supplied through Telecom, replaces the bank's conventional PABX, and will make it possible to handle calls in more intelligent ways, says Kiwibank customer services manager Chris Sturgeon.

Customers can now identify themselves by keying a pin into their handset rather than having to answer security questions posed by contact centre staff.

The Cisco IPPC system is also making it possible to reroute incoming calls to particular staff - either inside the call centre or elsewhere in the country - based on the phone number customers have called to access phone banking or their customer profile.

Kiwibank isn't using the system to prioritise calls from high-value customers, though Mr Sturgeon says the new phone platform does have the capability to allow that.

The system also has improved disaster recovery features.

Mr Sturgeon says "the jury is out" on whether Kiwibank might set up more contact centres outside Wellington as its business grows, or remain centred on the capital, but either way the IP-based system will make it easier to expand the contact centre.

"Some of the future benefits are that if you have got a network of agents throughout the country, you could easily route a call through to Invercargill, for example. That's considerably harder to do with a conventional PABX."

Mr Sturgeon says the use of phone banking is still growing, despite the popularity of Internet banking. Customers are using the phone to obtain bank balances and to check if incoming payments have arrived and often turn to the Net for services such as arranging bill payments, he says.

  • TelstraClear will provide telco services to law firm Bell Gully for the next three years in a deal valued at $2.5 million.


    • The company employs 250 staff in Wellington and Auckland and will use TelstraClear's IP network for telephony and video-conferencing.

    "The enhanced speed and security of this solution will allow us to create a truly virtual law firm," says Bell Gully commercial director Don Staples.

    "Our lawyers and clients will be able to work together and share information securely wherever they are."