Case Study: Kantar Implements CCaaS Solution

Background

Kantar is the world’s leading evidence-based insights and consulting company, with a complete, unique and rounded understanding of how people think, feel and act, globally and locally in over 90 markets.

Requirements

Kantar had been operating with an on-premise solution in individual centres in different countries, but to streamline their global CATI market research centres, Kantar was looking for a central cloud-based contact centre as a Service (CCaaS) platform.

The chosen platform had to be:

• robust and reliable
• easy to scale up or down as necessary
• flexible enough for interviewers to work from anywhere with just a headset and a web browser
• flexible enough to allow any of the global Kantar businesses to run campaigns of any size and of any duration from anywhere in the world

Sytel’s Solution

Sytel has integrations with most of the leading CATI vendors, including Kantar’s own solution from NIPO. We had previously worked with NIPO connecting to Kantar-owned companies and independent organisations globally.

Attracted by this ready-to-go NIPO integration, Kantar opted for Sytel’s Softdial contact centre” (SCC) platform.

So that individual Kantar sites had no need to procure and manage infrastructure, SCC was deployed as a fully managed solution in a test environment in the cloud. SCC’s modular nature meant that Kantar had the flexibility to suit their requirements.

The cloud solution would enable the interviewers to work from home using WebRTC. There is no local software required with WebRTC; the interviewer connects to the Sytel platform via a web browser and just needs a headset for the conversation. When the global pandemic hit in 2020, Kantar interviewers were able to work from home immediately.

Other SCC modules utilised by Kantar include Softdial Telephony Gateway ” (STG), AI Predictive Dialer, Softdial Reporter ” 5 and Softdial Recording Monitor”, providing Kantar with a central call recording and archiving facility.

Sytel carried out customisations to fit Kantar’s needs. These included providing individual and centralised reports and a customised supervisor console specific to Kantar.

Results

At maximum the platform will support a load of 3500+ concurrent telephone interviewers across 25+ countries.

The central global cloud solution allows for instant and rapid growth as new countries join up, with operations in multiple countries scheduled for 2022. Kantar can work on a single campaign locally or a global campaign with more than one country contributing.

Dave Murray, Director of Technical Solutions at Kantar, commented:

“Sytel’s solution supports multiple, segregated tenants, which allows our operating companies to remain separate, keeping control of client-sensitive data and deploying their own local configurations to maintain compliance and productivity.

“Sytel’s extensive experience, in both cloud hosting operations and support for CATI, together with their global leadership in predictive dialing were the key determinants in choosing them as our partner for this company-critical activity.” he added.

Michael McKinlay, CEO of Sytel, stated:

“This project takes advantage of our all-round strengths in offering cloud solutions, and we are delighted to have been chosen by Kantar to be their partner on this global project.

“Cloud operations can play a major role in improving business efficiency and yet allow local companies to still operate autonomously, as is the case with Kantar,” McKinlay concluded.