gem's service was designed to provide tourists with all the relevant information required to encourage visits to the island of Ireland as well as offer the necessary information to enable them to finalise and book their itinerary.

This project had a 5 week time frame from order (7 working days of which were over the 2002 Christmas holiday period) and required the recruitment and training of 25 multi lingual staff to cover the United States, Canada, UK, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain and Finland, through live voice and email channels.

Since queries can vary from straightforward airline information requests to open questions regarding, for instance Irish myths, legends or trivia, agents are trained to locate information quickly online and provide the necessary information to progress customers to the point of booking.

As an information service in the travel / leisure sector an unscripted environment was created, to present customers with a natural and friendly response reflecting a recognised characteristic of Ireland. Part of our operational brief is to represent our client's brand message in terms of 'People' Place and Culture.

In terms of technology, we implemented the requisite e-mail response systems; recorded various IVR messages; set up the IVR routing and ACD systems on the Cisco IPCC IVR telephony systems and worked with our client to ensure direction of the various client country numbers to our Belfast facility. With regard to the IVR service we pioneered the addition of a new process whereby a caller can use a recorded message system to record brochure requests. This is later transcribed by agents thus allowing us to seamlessly handle the large spikes in call volume which occur during global advertising campaigns, 24 hours a day.

The interface for contact recording is a web-based system, feeding into our client's database at a remote location. gem implemented a secure encrypted link between our location and the remote site.

The project went live on the date and time designated at the time of order. Our success is evidenced by the Danish element of our client's operation being a recipient of a Travel Industry Award for its excellence of service.