Talking Computers gets message across - the ditch

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland telephone messaging system developer Talking Computers has established an Australian beachhead, with Mitsubishi Electric buying its SuperQ call centre to handle calls to its national service centre.

Talking Computers is one of the largest voicemail companies in New Zealand market, with more than 500 sites and 35,000 mailboxes, but has been wary of looking overseas.

"We tried about eight years ago to go international with our IVR (integrated voice response) server, but it wasn't the right product - it was a tool for software developers, and developers don't like buying tools," said sales director Mark Tod.

Talking Computers has developed a relationship with a group of Sydney-based dealers of Siemens PABX equipment.

It hopes to use them to sell two products, SuperQ and a VM Outlook, a relatively inexpensive product which allows firms to integrate voicemail with Microsoft Outlook desktop software.

SuperQ is a "a call centre for people who are not looking for call centres - it's for anything from three to 30 agents, so it's suited for service centres and environments which are about more than just people sitting round answering phones".

The system, which went live at Mitsubishi Electric last week, is used by 16 agents in four separate units at the company's sprawling Sydney base. SuperQ will log call usage for Mitsubishi.

The reporting tools are used by Talking Computers to maintain the system remotely from New Zealand, and also help it to quickly customise and roll it out.

"We also had to record culturally neutral voice tokens," Tod said. "Australians are a lot more parochial than Kiwis, and it wouldn't do to have New Zealand accents."

He said the VM Outlook system, which works with any voicemail system using a Dialogic D4 board, had huge potential as "a cross-platform software-only upgrade".

Talking Computers Limited