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Bavarian State Tax Office opts for online assistance from novomind AG
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Virtual assistance will reduce costs
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Requests will be dealt with rapidly and effectively via novomind IQ™
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Hamburg, Germany, February 1st, 2006 –
The Munich-based Bavarian State Tax Office (Bayerische Landesamt für Steuern) was one of the pioneers behind the development of ELSTER, the electronic tax declaration form. As a result of ELSTER, they are expecting a sharp increase in the need for more information from the public sector. As a result, they will be boosting their personnel resources at the end of the tax year with the addition of "Elias" - a new, virtual employee who will be online at www.elster.de to answer taxpayers’ questions. The online assistant was created using the novomind IQ™ developed by the software provider from Hamburg: novomind AG. "Elias" owes his distinctive appearance to novomind’s partner, kiwi interaktive medien.
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By implementing "Elias", the tax office aims to cut their high telephone costs. Although hotline staff were so far able to answer all incoming phone, e-mail and fax queries individually, the start of the new year typically heralds a steep seasonal increase in the number of incoming questions. The virtual assistant is designed to help staff out during the busy period by answering routine queries about the electronic tax declaration form in real time and help users navigate their way through the form. "Elias” helps guide users to specific and relevant information. The solution’s long-term aim is to deal with up to 100,000 queries a month which would otherwise have ended up in call center inboxes and phone queues. A second objective is to increase customer satisfaction overall. While his colleagues leave their desks to return home after a hard day’s work, "Elias” is on duty to answer taxpayers’ questions 24 hours a day. This enables a significant reduction in processing times for customer requests, which currently average 5 days per request.
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The Hamburg-based software provider, novomind, is the fastest-growing company in the field of electronic customer communication and e-mail management. As a leading provider of digital customer communication solutions, novomind AG offers software solutions tailored to guarantee customers better, more individual service - significantly improving customer administration and generating a rapid return on investment. The product department’s portfolio includes the novomind Self Service Suite™. The software package contains the full range of communication modules needed for a customer service center: e-mail management, virtual customer assistance and systems enabling interactive, real time communication online - all in one, centralized knowledge database.
The novomind services department develops complex e-business applications that include scalable online shop solutions. Over 40 leading companies have opted for novomind technology so far, including Citibank, the Otto Concern, Yello Strom and the German pension insurance office. EnBW and Mexx, as well as public sectors representatives such as the German Parliament and the Federal Ministry of Finance, have already successfully implemented novomind systems to boost customer loyalty, turnover and public relations.
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