EDS Canada and General Motors Corp. announced this week the creation of a Customer Interaction Centre (CIC) in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. to support GM’s Roadside Assistance program in the United States.
Located where a grocery store once stood, the new EDS Canada Customer Interaction Centre (CIC) is being renovated and expected to be operational this fall, said Jim Paris, EDS Canada’s client delivery executive.
The city of Sault Ste. Marie provided assistance and support to secure additional land and resources needed for the CIC and in exchange 275 new jobs will be created further enhancing economic development, said city officials.
GM’s Roadside Assistance will be the anchor client at the Sault Ste. Marie facility. The Centre – powered by Avaya’s CentreVu Call Management System – will be used exclusively for in-bound telephone traffic.
While EDS Canada’s other CICs located in Sydney N.S. and Mississauga Ont. host more than one client, the Sault Ste. Marie centre will host GM alone, Paris said.
The current build up is to support GM, and the CIC said it will have additional capacity. But there are no plans at this time to have another organization being supported in Sault Ste. Marie, Paris said.
The 35,161-square-foot telephone call centre will work in tandem with another EDS CIC in Phoenix, Ariz., and both CICs will support General Motors Corp., Paris said.
EDS Canada opened the Sydney CIC last August, the Mississauga CIC in April, and another in Port Hawkesbury, N.S., is currently under construction.
Roadside assistance is available to all GM new car owners during the warranty period and provides complimentary non-warranty services including towing, lockout assistance, emergency fuel delivery, jump start service, flat tire assistance and other services, said General Motors Canada spokesman Stew Low.
“Roadside Assistance is a service to help motorists that get stranded whether by a flat tire, running out of gas or lock their keys in their cars,” Low said.
This business includes Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Buick, Chevy, GMC, Saab, Saturn, Isuzu medium duty and MIC. The system interacts with several internal GM systems as well as systems external to GM to provide a range of services to assist callers.
EDS said the latest telephony and contact management software is being deployed in support of the two call centres supporting GM. Callers are routed to the appropriate call centre advisors at either centre to reduce the on-hold time to an absolute minimum. The new contact management system is a MS-Windows based client server application.
In addition to the new contact management system, the following technologies will also being deployed: computer telephone integration (CTI) functions; workforce management and quality monitoring tools; interactive voice response, automatic call distribution and automatic paging; LAN/WAN and office automation software, and a graphical locator solution.
