RESEARCH FOCUS  -  CUSTOMER CARE IN TELECOMS

Call Centres

Recent research has predicted the rapid growth of European Call Centres, over the next few years. As well as indicating that the UK is considered to be one of the most favored location for call Centres. B

In order to maintain this lead in the call Centres market, and encourage more companies to be established in the UK, Call Centres in the UK must constantly review their working practices and business processes to ensure that they continue to deliver world class customer service. 

The Call Centres may be set up by the organisations, to support their own products or services. Additionally, there are an increasing number of generic Call Centres being established. These provide outsourced Call Centre facilities for a number of organisations. In all cases, the approach used in call handling will portray an image of the originating organisation to callers. 

For all types of Call Centre, there are a number of aspects that should be considered when improving the services provided by the Call Center, these include:

	Lower the costs of long distance calling
	Introduce standard business processes across the Call Center
	Provide, objective, performance feedback to call agents, based upon service level agreements.
	Provide quality metrics based upon objectives and goals
	Shorten queue times and answer customers calls more quickly
	Understand the call types

Improving the services provided will help to improve the efficiency of the Call Centres, as well as reducing costs. The improved service will also enhance the perception of the originating organisation, as visualised by the Call Centre users. 

Increasingly sophisticated systems are being used by the public and business alike for communications. These include; internet, e-mail and fax, as well as different types of telephone technology. All of which can be used to contact an organisation, requesting similar information to that provided by existing Call Centres. 

As a result, there is a need to be able to integrate the various new communications systems, with the existing call handling services. This will allow the integration of data, from different sources, which can be accessed through data warehouses. Such integration can provide a one stop shop for the handling of all customer service elements, regardless of its origin, providing a combined customer support service. 

Related areas within this Research Focus topic,  include:

  Service    Loyalty    CRM    Call Handling    

Additional information is also available on this Research Focus topic, these areas include:

  Metrics     Billing   Outsourcing    Systems

Return to the Introduction  page of this Research Focus topic.