New independent research by GfK Mystery Shopping, in conjunction with The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service initiative shows that smart companies are improving their customer service to beat the economic recession. The findings reveal that call centre queues overall are getting shorter, with 96% of callers getting through first time compared with 93% last year and that 66% of customers speak to a agent in less than a minute versus 58% in 2008. The study also revealed that F&C Investments is the UK’s best call centre for customer service.

The report considered elements such as menu options, clear transfer between agents and follow up calls and found that 92% of callers felt that contacting a call centre was easier than ever before. Agents remain very knowledgeable with 83% agreeing that call centre representatives had good product knowledge and the ability to resolve customer enquiries. In fact 94% of customers enquires where resolved in the initial call.

Overall, 86% of callers were either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their call centre experience, with nearly half (43%) of these being extremely satisfied. These happy customers are having a positive impact on brand perception; only 33% of callers had a high regard for the organisation prior to the call whereas after the call experience, 59% of callers said that they had an enhanced perception of the organisation.

The results are taken from the 2009 Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service benchmarking initiative, sponsored by Genesys and Noble Systems, which is one of the largest mystery shopping exercises in the UK. Over 17,000 mystery enquiries were made to the UK’s leading call centres in retail & distribution, financial services, telecoms & utilities, public sector and entertainment, leisure & travel. Each call was rated using over 50 criteria across five key areas of service - timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalised service – and awarded a Customer Service rating in percentage terms.

F&C Investments was the best performing call centre overall, with an amazing 94.95%. The top three best performers (F&C Investments, Denplan and First Direct) are all from the financial services & insurance industries, which was the top performing sector overall, beating retail & distribution who held the top spot in 2008.

Top Performers by Sector:

Financial Services: F&C Investments 94.95%
Retail & Distribution:  Dyson 92.39%
Entertainment, Leisure & Travel:  Bourne Leisure 90.67%
Public Services: Ufi learndirect 88.87%
Telecoms & Utilities: United Utilities 88.70%

The most improved sector was entertainment, leisure & travel which saw its overall score rise from 82% in 2008 to 86% in 2009. Telecoms and utilities also improved year on year, increasing their overall customer service rating by 3% to score 85% in 2009. The overall average score for the call centre industry increased from 83% in 2008 to 84% in 2009; with those call centres participating for the second year seeing an average 2% increase.

Andy Firth, Director, GfK Mystery Shopping comments: ‘The increase in the overall score for the Top 50 Call Centre Benchmarking Programme is not only significant, but would be considered to be a very good performance by the vast majority of organisations. Such an improvement is indicative of the positive actions taken by Top 50 members since 2008, particularly in key areas such as the understanding and caring attitude of staff’.

For the first time, the study also looked at email communications, which is becoming more important in the digital age. Boots was the top performer in this category with an overall score of 90%. 46% of queries received a full response within a day, however the report shows that there is still room for improvement in this area. With more and more call centres realising that it is important to be able to communicate with customers via their preferred method they are working to improve the standards of their email communications.

Lucille Jackson, Senior Marketing Manager UK & Ireland, Genesys, comments: “It is good to see that agent competency was rated highly in the Top 50 initiative, as this corroborates the findings in recent research that we undertook, with Datamonitor and Ovum, which highlights that competent service representatives were the greatest source of consumer satisfaction for an overwhelming majority of the study's participants (75%), after convenience (40%), personalisation (39%) and proactivity (35%). This demonstrates a clear shift-change in businesses' approach to customer service and the need to address the main causes of frustration. It is clear that certain businesses are raising their game where consumer satisfaction is concerned, especially as it is becoming increasingly apparent that good customer service is key to increasing profitability and riding out the recession.”

“With overall consumer and business spending reduced, it is even more important than ever for organisations to deliver outstanding customer service that will help attract new customers and retain existing ones in these tough economic times. The results of our study clearly show that call centres are rising to the challenge and that smart companies are investing and encouraging outstanding customer service” commented Simon Thorpe, Programme Director, Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service. “We would like to congratulate F&C Investments for their excellent performance and indeed all of the Top 50 for such high achievements. We hope the initiative will inspire other call centres to improve their customer service to reach the standards set by our Top 50 members.”

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Notes to Editors

About the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service

Organisations who took part in the Top 50 Call Centre initiative include: Boots, BUPA, Cambridgeshire County Council, Comet, Co-operative Financial Services, Direct Line, DVLA, EDF Energy, Eurostar, First Direct, Holiday Extras, ING Direct, John Lewis Direct, Kent County Council, Laithwaites, LEGO, Lloyds TSB Insurance, M&S Direct, Nationwide Direct, O2 UK, P&O Ferries, Prudential, Specsavers Optical Superstores, Surrey County Council, Tesco Personal Finance, Thomas Cook, United Utilities, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Vodafone.

About Call Centre Focus

Call Centre Focus is the UK’s leading magazine covering all aspects of the call centre industry and customer service in general. Articles give practical advice and tips on how to ensure successful and effective customer contact and the regularly updated website (www.callcentre.co.uk) ensures that readers are kept abreast of the very latest market news. In short, it is a one-stop-shop for call centre professionals everywhere.

About Top 50 Call Centres

The Top 50 Call Centre initiative is a benchmarking exercise, in partnership with GfK NOP, a leading independent market research organisation, and sponsored by Genesys & Noble Systems. Its aims is to help call centres find out how the general public thinks they are performing through over 17,000 mystery shopping enquiries, half of these from current customers of each independent call centre.

Calls will be rated for customer service criteria identified by the customers themselves including timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalisation. The calls will reflect different enquiry types from simple requests to more complex enquiries, truly reflecting the range of calls the call centre receives. They will take place at different times of day, during peak and non peak periods, including weekends.

About Genesys

Genesys, a product division of Alcatel-Lucent’s Application Software Group, provides Enterprise software that enable best-in-class customer service. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies can leverage their entire organization, from the contact centre to the back office, to improve the overall customer experience. As a result, Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive efficiency, and accelerate business innovation.

About Noble Systems

Noble Systems is a global leader in contact centre technology, delivering the industry’s most comprehensive and affordable solutions to enhance the performance and management of your contact centres. Noble Systems provides solutions that allow companies to communicate more effectively with their customers via multiple channels, including inbound/outbound/blended voice, email, fax and web.

Media contacts
For more information please contact:
Kerry Davis/Claire Barber
Wildfire PR
T: 0208 339 4420
E: Top50@wildfirepr.co.uk