On the 1st of July 2015 Ofcom introduced a significant change in the way consumers are charged for dialling service telephone numbers (that's any number beginning with 084, 087, 09 or 118). In order to make things clearer for callers, organisations are now required to state a totally new charging structure wherever they advertise such numbers. Before the 1st July, calls to service numbers tended to be advertised in a certain way: Read more
Whatever the main objectives are for a contact/call centre, they probably have something to do with communicating a service or product, providing assistance, or gaining customer information. But what is it that really makes a contact centre successful in what it does? The modern consensus seems to be that a holistic approach is more important than focusing solely on KPIs like ASR and First Call Resolution. Indeed, only focusing on such factors can severely limit a call centre’s potential. In reality a successful contact centre incorporates good practice in all areas. Read on to find our top 10 tips for creating contact centre excellence by keeping the bigger picture in mind. Read more
More tough enforcement by the ICO has emerged following a bout of unsolicited marketing calls made by Direct Assist Ltd; a personal injury claims company. The organisation had made a high volume of calls offering access to solicitors for consumers who hadn’t given their permission to be contacted. The ICO has revealed that almost all of the individuals who made complaints had previously registered their telephone numbers with the TPS. Over 800 individual complaints were made over a period of 19 months, giving the ICO more than enough evidence to issue a monetary penalty. Read more
Nuisance calls have become a real talking point in the media recently. The issue has now earned ‘plague level’ status, with around 100,000 individual complaints made to the ICO last year. But cleaning up the industry will require the right actions from all parties, whether they be call centres, recipients of the calls, network operators, or the regulator. To clear things up we’ve suggested what we think is required from each angle in order to put an end to nuisance calls for good, and change the communications industry for the better... Read more
Predicting major changes in the contact centre industry can be difficult, but a recent report by business systems has uncovered some interesting trends and predictions by surveying over 100 individual contact centres. Questions regarding demographics, strategy, obstacles, and future investments were used to get a snapshot of the industry as it currently stands, and to examine what contact centre professionals are planning for the year ahead. Read more
For contact centres, outbound campaigns are now highly sophisticated. Businesses are utilising new technologies as their benefits are realised, and strategies are changing and adapting in response to consumer behaviour. Most outbound campaign managers are aware of this, and have a good idea of what they think is required for their campaign to be a success. Read more
Hundreds of businesses conduct high volume outbound calls for their sales and marketing campaigns, and campaign managers understand that proper planning and implementation is key to success. Read more
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is the communication protocols that allow for the transmission of
voice communications over the internet. In contrast to telephone calls that are made over the Public
Switched Telephone Network, where a connection is made between two points so that a call can be made, VoIP works by converting speech into tiny packets of data so that it can be transmitted, and then
reassembled at the destination. Read more
The costs associated with the operation of outbound call centres is extremely high, particularly in a situation where a centre has a large number of agents working for them. These high costs are palatable for a call centre when the operation is running smoothly, however, if there were to be a telecommunications issue, or a complete telecommunications service outage, then a call centre would be faced with a situation where they would be incurring all of the costs associated with their operation, but unable to generate any income through sales. In short, in situations such as this, a contact centre would be completely crippled, which makes it extremely important for a call centre to choose a provider that has a resilient and robust network. This article covers a small number of things that should be considered to ensure a network is reliable for call centre and enterprise customers. Read more
The ability to make and receive telephone calls is something that many of us take for granted, however, good practice should dictate that every contact centre carries out a full and thorough investigation into the resiliency of their telecoms provider to ensure that if a problem occurs, the ability of the call centre to continue operating isn't significantly compromised. Even if your ability to make and receive telephone calls isn't impacted, the degradation of call quality could have an equal impact on the operation of the call centre as a total telecoms outage. For the reasons specified above, it is of critical importance that questions about redundancy and resiliency are asked of your telecoms provider, and questions about the overall resiliency of your call centre are asked. Below are some examples of the types of questions that you need ask of your telecoms suppliers, and the types of action you should take to ensure resiliency: Read more
