10 November 2009
A Whitehaven call centre has been named the UK's best utility call centre for the second year running.
United Utilities' centre in North Shore Road gained top honours for a "telecoms and utilities" company in the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service survey.
Even better than that - the region's utility giant improved its overall score from 86% to nearly 89% and its national ranking from 14th to 12th. United Utilities' overall score was five per cent higher than the average call centre to take part in the survey.
Run by independent market research company GfK, the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service survey is billed as the nation's biggest ever independent call centre benchmarking exercise.
Posing as mystery shoppers, researchers made more than 17,000 calls to companies like BUPA, Direct Line, EDF Energy, M&S Direct, O2 UK, Thomas Cook, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Vodafone.
Calls were rated against criteria identified as important by customers themselves. This included timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalisation. The calls covered everything from simple requests to more complex enquiries and took place at different times of day, including weekends.
Gary Dixon, Customer Services Director for United Utilities said: "This is great news. Customer service is a big focus across our business and our call centre in Whitehaven is at the front line. We have around 400 call centre employees who take around three million calls a year dealing with everything from billing enquiries to water leaks and electricity faults. We have a fast-moving and complex industry, and employees need to be extremely knowledgeable and full of initiative."
Billing contact centre manager Peter Rowbottom said the big challenge, having achieved first place in sector last year, was to retain ranking and improve the company's overall position. "Accomplishing both of these objectives demonstrates the degree of effort and commitment front line staff at Whitehaven have put in over the last 12 months and continue to do so, focusing on delivering the best possible level of service to our valued customers," he said.
Simon Thorpe, Programme Director, Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, commented: "This benchmarking programme highlights 50 of the UK's top call centres who are prepared to put their reputations on the line in order to raise service standards for their customers. We would like to congratulate United Utilities 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."
ENDS