ICL Plc’s technology services business ICL Sorbus has begun work on a multi-million pound contract from Apple Computers Inc to provide Apple’s call center customer support for the whole of Western Europe. ICL has taken over the contract from British Telecommunications Plc, which won the business some four years ago, and which ran Apple’s help desk operations from five different centers throughout Europe. ICL is providing the Europe- wide support, covering 14 countries, from one center in Foots Cray, Kent, which it says has enabled considerable cost savings for Apple. The Kent center is manned by a multi-lingual team, and calls are all answered in the native language of the country calling. As well as the front line helpdesk operators, who, according to the company solve some 90% of queries in the initial call, the center houses second line, and third line staff, so that problems can be escalated if necessary. In the final instance, where problems are still outstanding, they can be escalated back to Apple. In addition, in the UK ICL will provide on-site engineering services, so if a problem is not solved on the telephone, ICL will schedule an engineer to call. The company is hoping to win a similar contract throughout Europe, to provide all engineering services, as it currently does for Gateway 2000 Inc. David Hesketh, director of European OEM sales for ICL Sorbus, says the company has been talking to more and more manufacturers to persuade them that manufacturing, design and distribution are their core competencies, whereas support and maintenance are Sorbus’ core business. He says the Apple win is testament to the sense of this proposition. The center started taking calls on Apple’s new Mac OS 8 operating system (CI No 3,208) in September, while the British Telecom contract was coming to an end, and has been live since November 3. The initial contract is for three years, and is worth multi-millions of pounds a year, Hesketh said.
