First Direct is the UK's Top Call Centre for Customer Service

LONDON: 10th October 2008:Telephone and online bank First Direct scored the highest overall score in the UK's biggest ever call centre benchmarking exercise, conducted by independent market research company GfK NOP. 

The study was commissioned by the UK's Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, a programme organised by Call Centre Focus magazine, to raise customer service standards in the call centre industry.  Each call centre 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.

GfK NOP made  20,000 mystery shopper calls to 50 of the UK's leading call centres, across five sectors - retail, financial services & insurance, telecoms & utilities, public sector and entertainment, leisure & travel - as part of an initiative to identify the best performers and raise the standing of the contact centre industry.

The UK's Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service

The strongest performing sectors were retail and financial services sectors; six financial services and three retail call centres feature in the UK's Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service. First Direct topped the list with an impressive 92%, nudging ahead of Denplan, F&C Investments and Lloyds TSB Insurance, all with 91%. 

The top performing retailers were independent wine merchant Laithwaites with a score of 90%, while quality shirt maker Charles Tyrwhitt scored 89% and Specsavers achieved 88%.   Cambridgeshire County Council was the leading public sector call centre and was included in the Top Ten, setting the standard in this sector, with a score of 87%, against the public sector average rating of 78%.

The highest performing sectors were retail and financial call centres with scores of 87% and 86% respectively.  Public sector call centres scored 78%, four points behind the telecoms & utilities and entertainment, leisure & travel sectors, which both scored 82%.   The highest performing call centre in the entertainment, leisure & travel category was Holiday Extras with 85% and United Utilities topped the telecoms & utilities sector with a score of 86%.

The 50 criteria used to evaluate the call centres took into account all aspects of customer service, including time to get through to a customer service representative, queue management, automated IVR systems, politeness, knowledge and friendliness of call centre staff, as well as how quickly enquiries were resolved.

Overall, the benchmark study showed that all Top 50 Call Centres are  getting the basics right: 93% of customers got through to the call centres on their first attempt and a staggering 96% of customer enquiries were resolved by the initial call.   In addition, 85% of callers were either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their call experience, 76% said they were likely or extremely likely to recommend the organisation and 71% said they were likely to start or continue to use the organisation.

Overall Top 50 scores

The weakest results uncovered by the benchmarking exercise were for 'personalised' service covering a range of 'softer' skills such as friendliness, politeness and eagerness to help.  The overall score for this category, at 68%, was significantly below the overall score of 83% for the Top 50 Call Centres.

Claudia Hathway, Editor of Call Centre Focus, commented:
"This benchmarking survey represents a landmark for the call centre industry, with 50 of the UK's top call centres prepared to put their reputations on the line in order to raise service standards for their customers. We would like to congratulate First Direct for their excellent performance, and indeed all of the Top 50, for such high achievements. We hope this initiative will inspire other call centres to improve their levels of customer service to reach the standards set by our Top 50 members and we are grateful to Siemens for their enthusiastic sponsorship and support of the programme and its aims.

"The results show that many organisations are already delivering a world-class service to their customers.  However, there is still room for improvement, particularly in the area of personalised service.  By investing in the frontline employees who provide call centre service, organisations have an opportunity to differentiate their performance and increase customer long-term loyalty."

Paul Cooper, Strategic Director at the Institute of Customer Service which is a supporter of the awards, said: "The aim of National Customer Service Week (6-12 October) is to celebrate outstanding customer service and we are delighted to see the top 10 call centres announced at the same time.

"The programme is a great way of raising the profile of those companies which take the time to ensure customer satisfaction over the phone. It is important to recognise these companies as beacons within the industry, with the hope that it will inspire others to make it into the list for next year."

ends

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.

Research methodology
In total, 400 calls were made to each of the 50 organisations - resulting in a total sample of 20,000 calls. The mystery shopping exercise is based on a comprehensive analysis of call centre service in five key areas derived from extensive focus group research with actual customers.  The report will be published in October 2008.

Calls were split across customer and non-customer assessor profiles and across simple and more complex enquiries.  Assessors were profiled as closely as possible to the organisation they were calling and used their real background, contact details to maximise their credibility.  Where appropriate to the scenario in question, they had policy numbers; customer reference numbers etc. to hand in case they were asked for these to resolve their enquiry.

Scenarios were constructed so as to be comparable across all organisations and sectors involved.  Examples are shown below:

Trained mystery shoppers were used for the calling and restrictions were placed on the number of calls made by individual assessors.  On the 'customer' scenarios and those where contact details may be requested, shoppers were limited to no more than 1 call per organisation.
Calls were made between May and August 2008.

About Call Centre Focus
Call Centre Focus is the UK's leading monthly 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 for Customer Service
The Top 50 Call Centre initiative is a benchmarking exercise, conducted by GfK NOP, a leading  independent market research organisation, and sponsored by Siemens, that aims to help call centres find out how the general public thinks they are performing through 20,000 mystery shopping calls, half of these from current customers of each participating organisation.

Calls were rated against five customer service criteria identified by extensive focus group research with customers themselves: timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalisation. The calls reflected different enquiry types from simple requests to more complex enquiries, truly reflecting the range of calls the call centre receives. They took place at different times of day, during peak and non peak periods, including weekends.

About Siemens Enterprise Communications
Siemens Enterprise Communications is one of the world's leading suppliers of Unified Communications technologies. The company's unique Open Communications approach to providing software, solutions and services for enterprises of all sizes enables business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure - with any device, network or information technology infrastructure.

Media contacts
For more information please contact:
Sarah-Anne Bray
Wildfire PR
T: 0208 339 4420
E: Top50@wildfirepr.co.uk