Call centre operator Insight CCS has capped off 12 months of operation in the Western Australian market by winning a major contract with the WA Local Government Association.
Call centre operator Insight CCS has capped off 12 months of operation in the Western Australian market by winning a major contract with the WA Local Government Association.
Insight will provide after-hours services for local government authorities across the State.
However, it will still face competition from rival firm Synergy Regional, which bid unsuccessfully for the LGA contract and is now planning to aggressively target individual councils.
The LGA contract was designed to pool the call centre services of the State’s 144 councils in order to drive down costs.
A tiered pricing structure means that costs will decline as the number of councils using the service increases.
Insight CCS already provides call centre services to four local government authorities, in Gosnells, Joondalup, Subiaco and Swan.
“We had an insight into the industry and what they needed,” State manager Dene Christall said.
He said the firm currently had 45 staff in Perth and planned to put on between 10 and 15 extra staff to ensure that all Western Australian calls would be answered locally.
Synergy managing director John van der Ende said he was very disappointed by the decision to award the contract to Insight CCS.
“We are very unhappy they got it because they are a Sydney company and they have no regional presence,” Mr van der Ende said.
By contrast, he said, Synergy had three call centres in WA, in Perth, Albany and Collie, with about 200 staff.
Mr van der Ende vowed to pursue new contracts in the local government sector.
“Synergy will go quite aggressively into the market and chase individual councils,” he said.
It has already started this process, renewing its contract with the City of Armadale last week.
WALGA acting chief executive Peter Hoare said Insight CCS was awarded the contract because it offered the best value for money.
He said one of the key criteria for WALGA was a requirement that staff in WA with local geographic knowledge would answer all calls.
Insight CCS’s existing contracts also helped it win the tender.
“In a short period of time they have built up a very good track record,” Mr Hoare said.
Mr Christall said he and other staff that established Insight CCS’s WA office last July had previously worked for national firm Link Communications, which closed its WA office several years ago and serviced the WA market from interstate call centres.
“We saw an opportunity to open up because people want their calls answered in WA,” he said.
The firm currently has about 500 clients in WA, including real estate agents and many small to medium sized businesses.
Meanwhile, software firm QAS announced that it would supply its QuickAddress Pro address management software to Insight CCS.
QuickAddress Pro will be integrated with Insight’s Noetica software across its three call centres in Sydney, Perth and Tasmania.
