NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 10 – Information technology solutions provider Seven Seas Technologies (SST) has sealed a major deal with Qmatic- the world’s number one developer and supplier for Customer Flow Management (CFM) solutions in the East Africa region.
The appointment of SST as the regional Qmatic solutions service provider and distribution partner is a major coup for the locally headquartered IT provider as service providers in the region begin to embrace customer flow management and customer relationship management solutions to further boost their overall output and productivity cost effectively.
With the appointment, SST will now provide a range of Qmatic CFM solutions ranging from small single branch site systems to a wide network of centrally connected branches. And from single service to multiple services; from linear queuing to virtual queuing solutions.
The integration of CFM systems in the developed world has served to raise the efficiencies and customer trust of most government service provision points alongside increased efficiencies in the utility and healthcare service provision environments.
Speaking in Nairobi when he confirmed the new partnership with Qmatic, SST Group Founder and CEO Michael Macharia explained that the new deal will complement the firm’s end to end service provision capacity.
Service providers such as public service centres, hospitals, utility bills payment centres, mobile phone companies, retailers and banks across Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda Macharia explained will now conveniently access Qmatic’s sales and support directly from Seven Seas Technologies offices across the four countries.
The move by Qmatic to seal a deal with a local company, Mr Macharia notes is also an affirmation of the growing confidence for local service providers’ capability to support globally acclaimed IT systems.
“Customer Flow Management may sound as simple as queue management in the service delivery sphere, but research now confirms that poor CFM remains the number one contributor to customer complaints and rising customer service management costs,” Mr Macharia explained.
And added: “Regional contemporary business leaders in the service sector seeking to increase their cost efficiency by managing waiting time can however enjoy the benefits of Qmatic’s Customer flow management systems now available at Seven Seas Technologies.”
On his part, Qmatic Group Vice President in charge of Indirect Sales Chris Redmond, said: “We believe there is a huge untapped potential in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. We are very pleased to have signed a distribution agreement with Seven Seas, and we believe we have the right people onboard to help drive our business in the area.”
“Banks, telecoms and government institutions delivering citizen service strive to improve service delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa, and with the help of Seven Seas, we believe we are well placed to help them achieve this.”
To showcase the SST/Qmatic partnership, the two firms will be at hand to demonstrate their capabilities at the forthcoming banking event AITEC Banking and Mobile Money, COMESA, set for Nairobi on 2nd -3rd March at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.
Globally, CFM solutions are designed to link the vast amount of customer information in CRM databases to the real-time activities targeting and influencing the customers present in the service provider’s premises.
The benefits of this approach are significant. In the short-term it can increase sales and productivity by up to 30 percent and decrease costs by up to 30 percent by ensuring that the right customer is at the right place, at the right time and is serviced by the most appropriate staff member.
CFM solutions also help to raise customer and staff satisfaction by reducing the actual as well as the perceived waiting time and creating a relaxed environment characterised by a controlled and fair waiting process.
The global market is evidently starting to accept Customer Flow Management as a natural part of the ordinary operations of service oriented businesses. The stage with early adopters has long passed in the most advanced markets like UK, the Netherlands and Scandinavia and the ideas have now gained a foothold in most markets across the globe including Kenya where service providers are now moving to demand for such solutions.