Virtual Call Center

Worcester Community Housing (WCH) in the United Kingdom had a key focus of providing social housing, concentrating on the letting, management and maintenance of affordable homes for individuals in housing need.

WCH was established in 2004 to take over the ownership and management of rented homes from the Worcester City Council in the West Midlands of England.

WCH already had a call center already in place taking nearly 44,000 calls over a 12 month period. As a separate entity aside from the local government, WCH needed to find a way to effectively manage calls from the tenants that related to the services the organization provided for them. This was an even bigger challenge with a series of major renovation programs in process.

In a quest to achieve greater innovation in communications, WCH decided to implement a new Contactual (News - Alert)virtual contact center that would sit on top of its existing telephony system. With this implementation, WCH could operate a virtual call center, provide the key features that any contact center needs and provide them without the complexity of a premise-based system.

WCH Head of ICT Mark Pinder explained: 'A traditional call centre would have required a specialized IT infrastructure, upfront costs and dedicated IT staff. What we wanted at WCH was to quickly set up and deploy a virtual contact centre in which service agents only need a phone, an Internet connection, and a web browser to get started.'

The implementation of this system has helped to streamline operations for WCH. According to Pinder, when a tenant calls in, their call is handled by the Contactual interactive voice response (IVR) system. This system has a menu with three options: Gas, Repairs and All Other Calls. Calls are then forwarded to the appropriate agent.

WCH was able to benefit greatly from the Contactual system implementation as they were able to lease contact center technology in an effort to deflect high upfront costs. They were also able to shift buying into operating expenditure. The pay as you go model simplifies cost management and business planning. At the same time, the flexibility of the platform enables agents to set up shop at home if necessary.

Pinder added: 'The system was very simple to install and to navigate. There were two big selling points. Agent users only had to log on and tell the system what phone they were working at. The Contactual hosted VoIP system was also a very effective fit with the phone system we had in place.'

And it was very quick to install, and has given us far greater usability. All that has meant a major improvement in the quality of customer service we are able to offer to our tenants, which in turn has led to increased customer satisfaction. At the same time, we have been able to reduce our costs.'

This implementation for Contactual is a significant win in the European market. In other Contactual news, the company announced  last fall that it increased its presence in Europe thanks to a new reseller partnership with Holland-based telephony and call center software provider HTSE . Contactual already has partners reselling its hosted call center solutions in the UK, Japan and Australia.

Contactual continues to deliver measurable benefits to companies throughout the world. Its success has enabled the company to establish a firm presence in Europe . Contactual's European operations are based in Guildford, United Kingdom and led by Philip Harman, director of EMEA operations.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Patrick Barnard