Transurban's motivation for using CRM to shift customers away from human channels to electronic channels isn't hard to discern. Whereas a call made to CityLink's call centre used to cost the company about $1 a minute, interactions via the Web cost the company only 5 cents each. With a cost-cutting incentive like that, it's no surprise to learn that Transurban was in a rush to get a new customer relationship system in place. The company opted for Clarify, an off-the-shelf product from AmDocs.

At the top of the agenda, says Tizi, was to integrate the new systems with Transurban's billing applications so that call centre staff would be able to view a customers' billing details while speaking to them on the phone. Customisation work was also undertaken in conjunction with Genasys and CTI to develop "screen pops" - pop-up windows containing a customer's account history which appear onscreen when the system transfers a query from an electronic channel to a human call centre operator. Thanks to this technology, Transurban call centre staff no longer have to ask customers to repeat all their details.

"Just being able to talk to the customer intelligently, effectively, and with up-to-date information made an enormous difference to the way the customers behaved," Tizi says. "The average call length shrunk because the customer didn't have to keep explaining things - and you didn't have to listen while they blasted you for not knowing they'd already made contact with you."

The system went live about a year and a half ago and Tizi claims that since then, customer interactions have expanded in every new channel. "We've shifted probably half our customers from human channels to electronic channels. The situation quickly improved to the point where we were free to sort out the inaccuracy of the systems - the issues which were generating the calls in the first place."

SIDEBAR: CityLink: How it Works

CityLink joins together three of Melbourne's freeways, creating a 22km expressway linking Melbourne's airport, port area and industrial centres. The road uses a fully-electronic, cashless tolling system without toll stations or boom gates. Motorists can travel the entire route without stopping or slowing to pay tolls, helping to maintain free-flowing traffic on the expressway.

• Drivers are required to register with CityLink, either by opening a toll account or buying a day pass.

  Those who open an account receive a small wireless transponder, known as an e-Tag, to install on the vehicle's windscreen.

• As traffic passes underneath one of the road's 17 overhead gantries, a driver's e-Tag is detected and the tolling computer deducts the fare for that zone from the driver's account. This process completely removes the need for drivers to slow down.

• A 5.8GHz dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) microwave link at the toll gantry is used to communicate to the vehicle-mounted e-Tag. In the split-second communication the e-Tag and gantry exchange security information, serial numbers and account status details, and the toll is charged automatically.

• Drivers whose vehicles are not equipped with an e-Tag can opt to have their licence plate numbers registered on a day pass list.

  Mounted on each gantry are cameras for photographing vehicle licence plates and classifying vehicles by size and type (such as car, van or truck).

• Licence plate photographs are scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software and then used to confirm that a driver has purchased a day pass or if not, to nab toll evaders.