Case Study
The New Zealand Immigration Service

New Zealand is one of the classic emigration countries for British citizens, as well as being extremely popular with students or young persons as a place to work and travel. The huge level of interest in both permanent and short term work visa opportunities in New Zealand left the NZIS with the constant problem of how to satisfy the heavy public demand for information and literature of a general nature, while still leaving enough resources to maintain an efficient rate of processing of serious visa applications.

Inform Communications Plc was tasked with helping to find a solution to the problem. The successful solution has been for all general enquiries, whether by post, fax or telephone, to be processed at the Inform Communications customer contact centre. A dedicated telephone enquiry number is operated by Inform for enquirers to either listen to the qualification procedures for the different visa categories, order one of the many diverse information packs, or speak to a live consultant. Calls to the NZIS number are charged at £1.00 per minute and the premium rate revenue generated by the calls contributes significantly to the overall cost of running the service.

In addition to the core UK market, NZIS also operates across Europe to attract potential candidates from other nations. The cost of maintaining NZIS offices across Europe was, however, proving relatively expensive until Inform introduced a pan-European single telephone number offering a multilingual information service. This has enabled NZIS to operate in Europe at considerably reduced infrastructure costs.

Inform has been providing the above services for NZIS since 1997 and after a thorough review/ tender process, was awarded a new two-year contract in September 2002.

Inform is now developing a Self Service automated e-mail and weblink service for NZIS.