The customer: Stefan Esselens (Managing Director of Tele Ticket Service and Chief Technology Innovation Officer at Antwerps Sportpaleis N.V.)
“When we took over the Sportpaleis in 1999, we started working with iConnect. It is during this period that they have proven their knowledge and expertise when setting up our call center for ticket sales. Dynamic waiting groups were used, among other things, to shorten waiting times during peak times. And they have gained our trust, because you only get to know your supplier when something goes wrong. I don't need a product supplier; I need a service provider who comes up with solutions, someone who thinks along with us, someone who understands our business and who knows what is critical to us. I don't need an SLA with a 24/7 service. I need someone who is there and pulls out all the stops when I have a problem ... a real partner. And that’s the kind of partner iConnect is.
Today we work with a centralized telephone exchange in the cloud, to which all our concert halls and locations are linked, and which is fully integrated into our data center. We have our private cloud, call between our sites for free, as if you are calling internally within one location, and go outside via the most efficient route. If I call from Antwerp to an external number in Ghent, I call locally as if I were in Ghent. The advantages are countless: lower telephone invoices; much simpler management, flexible extensions and better accessibility. "
What started in 1985 as a kind of student singing party grafted on the famous "Last Night of the Proms" in London eventually grew into Sportpaleis Groep - a group of companies that Antwerps Sportpaleis NV (the exploitation company that in addition to the Sportpaleis in Antwerp also the Ethias Arena, the Ethias Theater and the Grenslandhallen in Hasselt, Vorst Nationaal in Brussels, the Stadsschouwburg Antwerp and Capitole Gent are running), PSE Belgium (the concert organizer behind, among others, Night of the Proms and the Schlager festival) as well as the ticketing agency Tele Ticket Service.
"In the late 1980s we taught the Belgians to call to buy something," recalls Stefan Esselens, Managing Director of Tele Ticket Service and Chief Technology Innovation Officer at Antwerps Sportpaleis NV Suddenly people no longer had to go to FNAC or the FNAC. local record store to purchase concert tickets. Since then, this has been possible by telephone from the couch. 24 agents went to work every day to answer the phone calls. But when Felice Damiano first presented "The Swing Palace live on Stage" in 1999, the fence was completely destroyed. The telephone number to order tickets appeared on the TV screen during the program “Het Swingpaleis” and thousands of Flemish people immediately grabbed the phone to order tickets for the live event in the Sportpaleis. The call center agents each handled up to 200 calls each day.
Since 2006, sales are mainly online for all seven halls of the Sportpaleis group.
