OYO; Fully '"In Control"

The name @OYO is probably not familiar to the average holidaymaker. Nevertheless, with its brands Belvilla, Casamundo, Euro Relais and Ardennes Relais, this online provider of vacation homes is one of the main European players in the online accommodation rental market. Bookings that come in through the contact center are extremely valuable to the Dutch company. Belvilla alone earns around 18 million euros a year. All the more reason to have its customer service processes in order. Contact Center Live’s cloud solution offers this solution.

Belvilla

Every year, more than 1.3 million vacationers with more than 40 different

nationalities spend their vacations at @Leisure. The contact center staff therefore master many languages; from Polish and Italian to Spanish, German, et cetera. The customer service is set up as one virtual contact center operation, in practice spread over three locations: Eindhoven (60 seats), Hamburg (50 seats) and the head office in Amsterdam (5 seats). Bookings for the various brands come in via the websites, telephone and e-mail. Since 2009, the Dutch accommodation provider has enjoyed the support of Contact Center Live in this regard. Thanks to the cloud solution of this software supplier, working from home is also perfectly feasible. Agents really only need a fast Internet connection.

Calling, calling, calling

Martijn Gautier, CCC project manager at @OYO, has been working with the SaaS product in question since February 2011. To complete satisfaction, that is. Telephony is a very important contact channel for the online provider of vacation homes.Aroundthirty percent of Belvilla’s customer contact occurs by telephone. ‘Customers really call us about all kinds of things. They have booked a vacation home and want to bring two dogs instead of one. Or they would like to change the arrival or departure time. In such cases, we contact the landlord again.‘ By customers, by the way, he means both guests and homeowners. According to Gautier, the product an sich also strongly influences the choice of telephony. ‘People don’t buy shoes online, they rent a vacation home. Some work all year for that, so they need a double check. It can also happen that a customer has suddenly fallen ill and wants to know the exact cost of cancellation, for example.‘

Fewer FTEs

For @OYO, the choice between a premised-based or a cloud solution was not so difficult. ‘With premised-based, we would have to purchase more hardware, such as servers and switches and the like. Moreover, we would have to employ additional technical people for the various locations. Then you have to make a lot of connections,‘ Gautier believes. So in the context of scalability and fl exibility, the online accommodation provider went for SaaS, especially since contact center activities are performed from multiple locations. ‘It now doesn’t matter where the agent is or what language he speaks, customer contact can be handled anywhere. In addition, a cloud solution is cheaper, you have one reporting system, you can easily scale up and down the number of seats, you have no management and maintenance, better call routing is possible and you always have the most up-to-date software at your disposal.‘ Added together, these benefits for @OYO have resulted in fewerFTEs, a reduction in costs and centralized control of the contact center. In summary, Gautier can’t help but be pleased with Contact Center Live. ‘I can’t imagine us suddenly installing all kinds of systems at our various locations now. Give me the cloud!