To keep customers loyal, organisations need to provide quality service; and that often means giving customers freedom over 'how' and 'when' they choose to make contact.

The problem for many traditional contact centres, though, is that they're just not geared up to deal with the ever expanding range of technologies and devices - from PC and Smartphone-based services such as email and web chat, to mobile phone services such as SMS and MMS.

Contact centres must evolve; and more sophisticated and integrated customer contact handling systems are needed.

The Macfarlane CallPlus IP platform is a next generation multi channel technology system that delivers a robust, scaleable, distributed and fault tolerant solution for modern contact centres.

CallPlus IP provides the contact choice that customers are demanding. On a single platform, it supports all of the following media channels in an integrated manner.

• Phone (mobile or fixed line calling)
• Email
• Web Chat
• Short Message Service (SMS)
• Instant Messaging
• Fax

Through the close integration with CRM, CallPlus can deliver truly unified communications. It could be set up, for example, to recognise that a customer calling in is the same customer that emailed the previous day. CallPlus can then empower Customer Service Advisors with all relevant information and customer details; and unify vital data into reports for managers.

In the near future, Macfarlane will be extending the CallPlus IP platform to also support Multimedia Message Service (MMS) and video calling.