Dimension Data deal aims to take call centres to next level
Millennium 1 Solutions, a Toronto-based company that specializes in contact centres and credit card support services, is being acquired by Dimension Data, a South African technology company with operations in 48 countries around the world.
Millennium 1 and its 2,131 staff will become part of Merchants, a subsidiary of Dimension Data that also focuses on contact centres.
The purchase price was not disclosed.
Executives for both Millennium 1 and Merchants say that the deal is part of Merchants’ plan to push into the North American business process outsourcing market by offering “omnichannel” customer contact solutions using seamless technology integration. “There won’t be contact centres once you start getting into 2020 and beyond,” said George Todd, CEO of what will become the expanded Merchants Group. “They’ll be resolution centres, because things that just require contact will be done by automation and by bots and by selfserve. Things that require human interaction are going to be where it requires complex interaction.”
The idea with omnichannel customer service is that a person can reach out to a company by email, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or any number of other messaging services.
Todd said that Merchants provides automated chatbots that can take care of basic tasks, but if the customer interaction becomes too complicated, the chatbot can seamlessly transition to an actual human handling the text chat — still inside WhatsApp or some other third-party chat service.
“For the customer, nothing has changed. They’re having one conversation. Now, they know it’s switched over between automation and a person, but it’s a seamless thing for them,” Todd said. “For the company we’re providing the service for, the cost of that interaction then becomes much less, because the agent is only being applied for the period that they require.”
The other element of the deal comes from credit card services which represent more than half of Millenium 1 business. Tom Band, CEO of Millennium 1, said that the company currently provides services to four of the five big banks in Canada.
“The only area we don’t play in as it relates to credit cards today, is providing the plastics or providing the invoice to clients. Every other step of that life of a credit card is actually supported by Millennium for a number of brands today,” he said. “If you received an application in a retail store for a credit card and you wanted to activate and order a new card, that would likely at some point be coming to Millennium.”
Band said that the deal means that Merchants can expand its contact centres business into North America, while also bringing the credit card expertise to the rest of the company, with operations in Africa and the Middle East.