Michigan Department of Treasury Teams with Accenture to Launch Customer Call Center
WASHINGTON, D.C.; March 18, 2002 – With a simple toll-free telephone call, Michigan taxpayers now can reach a centralized customer call center to obtain answers to their questions about business and individual income tax laws, rules and regulations. The Michigan Department of Treasury and Accenture launched this customer call center, which is supported by 80 trained customer service representatives and staff.
Developed and launched initially as a pilot in four months, the call center now is in full production. The center’s new system, based in part on Siebel eGovernment Applications from Siebel Systems, Inc., is integrated with the Department’s existing tax databases, enabling customer service representatives to provide answers to routine questions while the taxpayer is on the phone. For more complex issues, a customer service request is created to research the matter and follow up with additional information for the taxpayer.
“Development of this call center represents a huge step forward for the State of Michigan, its citizens and its businesses,” said State Treasurer Douglas B. Roberts. “We’re pleased to lead the way as one of the first states to create a treasury customer relationship management system. This leading-edge solution reflects the State’s commitment to empowering Treasury customer service agents with technology to better serve our citizens.”
This $10 million project is an eight-year contract, with future milestones including addition of more customer self-service capabilities via the Web and e-mail. Using these new features, taxpayers will be able to use the Web to interact with the Treasury Department, view account data and submit e-mail forms for additional service requests. Michigan taxpayers soon will benefit from customer self-service opportunities with access to information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“The new call center will manage the two million calls that come into the Michigan Department of Treasury annually,” said Roger Dooley, an Accenture Government partner. “Citizens and businesses will gain quicker, more efficient access to information, instead of waiting on hold or being transferred to multiple customer service representatives.”
To develop the solution, the Accenture team incorporated Siebel Call Center, a call center application from Siebel Systems, a provider of eBusiness and eGovernment applications software, FileNET Enterprise Content Management software, Avaya Multimedia Contact Center telephony products and Intervoice-Brite interactive voice response system.
About Accenture
Accenture is the world’s leading management and technology services organization. Through its network of businesses approach -- in which the company enhances its consulting and outsourcing expertise through alliances, affiliated companies and other capabilities -- Accenture delivers innovations that help clients across all industries quickly realize their visions. With more than 75,000 people in 47 countries, the company generated net revenues of $11.44 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2001. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
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