The Sun International Group operates a diverse portfolio of hospitality and gaming assets, including world-class five-star hotels, premier resorts and modern casinos in prime locations. Included in this is SunBet Sport Betting, a premier online betting platform that offers various online betting options.

The Sun International contact centre is a focal point for the operation. The contact centre operation handles reservations for the group through the Sun Touch Customer Contact Centre and a dedicated Sun City Resort reservations department, as well as Vacation Club and Sun International’s loyalty programme, Sun MVG, and customer support for SunBet.

The contact centre serves as a primary point of customer contact and engagement across these divisions and is central to delivering the authentic personalised service for which the brand has become synonymous.

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“As customer engagement preferences have evolved over time, our contact centre capabilities have needed to adapt to keep meeting these changing demands and requirements,” explains Graham Wood, chief operations officer: hospitality at Sun International Holdings.

Initially using a competitor platform, Sun International chose to implement an Interactive Intelligence solution to meet its evolving contact centre requirements. Then, following the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence by Genesys, the Sun International Group used the opportunity to upgrade to a system that fit into the company’s internal business processes.

The group included Pivotal Data, a Genesys Gold partner, as its preferred solution implementor. Based on the functionality offered at the time, Sun International opted to implement an on-premises Genesys PureConnect solution when the company consolidated the contact centre operation back to the Sun International head office.

The migration began in July and the 14-user solution successfully went live in mid-October. This transition included a three-week freeze period and required a major focus on internal change management.

Pivotal Data commenced the transition from the on-premises Genesys PureConnect solution to the Genesys Cloud platform by first migrating the SunBet contact centre.

“The ability for Genesys Cloud to accommodate multiple engagement channels ensured the group could keep providing customers with a world-class online betting experience,” explains Karl Reed, Pivotal Data’s chief solutions officer.

The group’s reservations division, Sun Touch, followed soon after. The implementation happened in December during the group’s busiest peak period.

The transition went smoothly, with all 110 agents gaining instant access to omnichannel capabilities without any loss in business continuity.

Instant access

The successful implementation gave the reservations and bookings contact centre agents instant access to omnichannel engagement capabilities, including voice, e-mail, Web messaging, social media and WhatsApp.

The migration also gave contact centre teams access to vital workforce management, complex e-mailing capabilities, an outbound dialler, enhanced dashboards and gamification functionality that improved operational performance.

“Migrating our contact centre to the cloud was a strategically important decision as it ensured our sustainability through a very challenging period for the hospitality industry as South Africa entered one of the most stringent lockdown regimes anywhere in the world in response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” explains Wood.

When the South African government implemented stringent lockdown restrictions, which effectively shut down the local hospitality industry, Sun International required a contact centre solution that would maintain business continuity, particularly for the online betting division, with work-from-home (WFH) capabilities for all staff, including agents from the bookings and reservations divisions.

We now have the flexibility to scale our contact centre as our business needs and our customer engagement preferences continue to change over time

“While PureConnect also provided access to workforce management functionality, the client chose not to activate it as it required too much information per agent,” continues Reed.

The Genesys Cloud solution’s functionality ensured Sun International could monitor remote agent productivity and performance while creating a platform to effectively collaborate and communicate during the government-mandated lockdown.

Sun International also used the workforce management and analytics tools to determine how many agents in the Sun Touch contact centre operation needed to return to the office. Using granular reporting capabilities, the management team was able to select the best performers based on agent quality scores. Since the move, the SunBet team has been able to mostly work from home.

“The cloud solution’s customisable dashboard and reporting functionality has improved our agent management capabilities, which has boosted our overall performance,” says Wood.

Did you know?

Since implementing both Genesys contact centre solutions with Pivotal Data, Sun International’s conversion rate has improved significantly from 13% to 40-45%, which the customer has maintained since migrating to Genesys Cloud.

Creating more advanced Web chat capabilities has also helped Sun International reduce call volumes into the contact centre, with the booking division now able to drive more traffic online.

Importantly, Sun International is now favourably positioned to continue its contact centre modernisation strategy, with easy access to new features and functionality, additional engagement channels, including relevant social media platforms, and Web chat to support its digital booking platform.

The contact centre operation now also has access to other advanced capabilities such as automation to support rising call volumes.

“Importantly, we now have the flexibility to scale our contact centre as our business needs and our customer engagement preferences continue to change over time,” concludes Wood.

About Pivotal Data
Pivotal Data is a specialist provider of contact centre, CX and enterprise communication solutions. We partner with organisations to architect digitally proficient contact centre operations by bringing together the ideal combination of local and global solutions and infrastructure providers to meet unique technology requirements. Drawing from our extensive global and local partner network, we build, manage and support bespoke, innovative omnichannel solutions to address unique needs and meet evolving consumer engagement trends. Partner with us to grow your business by simplifying your digital transformation, cloud and CX journeys and create a resilient, future-ready contact centre operation.

Reach us on +27114760300, e-mail [email protected] or visit our website at pivotaldata.co.za.