Winners of the ‘Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service’ announced

The UK’s Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service have recently been announced by Call Centre Focus magazine.

The winners were …
1.  F&C Investments 94.95%
2.  Denplan 94.78%
3.  First Direct 93.52%
4.  Dyson 92.39%
5.  Dignity Caring Funeral Services 91.04%
6.  ING Direct 90.98%
7.  Bourne Leisure 90.67%
8.  National Savings & Investments 89.63%
9.  Ufi learndirect 88.87%
10. Holiday Extras 88.86%

The others in the Top 50 were (we were unable to obtain their position in the table)

• Abbey
• AVIVA
• Boots
• British Gas
• Bupa
• Cambridgeshire County Council
• CPP Group Plc (CPP)
• Comet
• Co-operative Financial Services
• Coventry Building Society
• Currys
• DPD
• EDF Energy
• EON
• General Medical Council
• Guinness Northern Counties
• Heateam (Baxi Group)
• HM Revenue & Customs
• Hull City Council
• Kent County Council
• LHA ASRA
• Liverpool Direct
• Lloyds TSB Insurance
• London Underground
• National Rail Enquiries
• Nationwide
• NHS Direct
• O2
• Orange
• P&O Ferries
• PC World
• RAC
• Royal Bank of Scotland Group – Retail Telephony
• Royal Bank of Scotland Group – UK Retail Operations
• Scottish Power
• Sky
• Specsavers Optical Superstores
• United Utilities
• Wokingham Borough Council

The strongest performing sectors were the financial services and entertainment, leisure & travel sectors; six financial services and two entertainment, leisure & travel call centres feature in the UK’s Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service. F&C Investments topped the list with an impressive 94.95%, nudging ahead of Denplan, First Direct and Dyson.

The top performing retailer was Dyson with a score of 92.39%, outperforming the sector’s average rating of 84%. Ufi learndirect was the leading public sector call centre and was included in the Top Ten, setting the standard in this sector, with a score of 88.74%, against the public sector average rating of 80%. In the entertainment, leisure & travel sector Bourne Leisure took the top spot with 90.67%, ahead of 2008 sector leader Holiday Extras who achieved 88.68%. United Utilities topped the telecoms & utilities sector with a score of 88.70%. Email communication was included in the benchmarking exercise this year and Boots performed best in this area with a score of 90%.

The overall score was 83%.

1. Financial Services 87%
2. Entertainment, Leisure & Travel 86%
3. Telecoms & Utilities 85%
4. Retail & Distribution 84%
5. Public Services 80%

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: 96% of customers got through to the call centres on their first attempt compared to 93% in 2008. In addition, 86% of callers were either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their call experience, 68% said they were likely or extremely likely to recommend the organisation and 70% said they were likely to start or continue to use the organisation.

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 66.43%, was significantly below the overall score of 84% for the Top 50 Call Centres.

Simon Thorpe, Programme Director, Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, commented:

“Customer service is becoming more important than ever as consumers are more careful about where and how they spend their money. Companies are realising that in order to retain customers during difficult financial periods customer service has to be first class.”