KCOM Contact Centres Ltd

As part of their vision for all telephone contact with the council to be handled through a single number strategy, Hull City Council (HCC) made the decision to outsource their customer service operation. And as a result, in August 2000 the customer service operation became Hull Connect, with KCOM Contact Centres being awarded the contract for a pilot scheme.

The operation launched with a team of eight staff, and initially only handled calls for one department. Following on from the success of this trial, in July 2001 Hull City Council awarded a seven year contract to KCOM Contact Centres to operate their Hull Connect customer service operation.

The full launch saw each of HCC's key service areas phased in to the contact centre operation over the course of the following couple of years. As a result the contact centre now handled calls from over 137 service areas, and covering matters as diverse as environmental health, waste management, traffic & highways, council tax and housing repairs. A further back office migration taking place in October 2005 for HCC's pioneering choice based lettings scheme known as 'Homesearch'. Additionally KCOM Contact Centres have undertaken other work including conducting city wide outbound surveys on behalf of HCC.

Today, the Hull Connect service continues to thrive and the operation has grown to around seventy five staff; and following a rigorous re-tendering and procurement process Hull City Council have recently made the decision to extend the arrangement with KCOM Contact Centres.

KCOM Contact Centres provide wholesale inbound directory enquiries services for 118212 (branded as Maureen), which is owned by Independent Radio News Ltd. The aim of the service is to deliver a quick and efficient directory enquiries service to each and every customer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year.

The characteristics of this type of service are high volume, short duration calls accompanied by call patterns that fluctuate considerably, and at times somewhat unpredictably, depending on the time of day, day of the week and even the time of year. Fundamental to KCOM Contact Centre’s success in managing this service, and consistently meeting the service level agreements, has been our ability to flexibly manage staff resources and shift patterns in response to these peaks and troughs.

Together KCOM Contact Centres and Independent Radio News have achieved national industry recognition, winning the prestigious "Wholesale Directory Enquiry Provider of the Year" award on two occasions.

KCOM Contact Centres have been delivering the Maureen directory enquiry service since December 2004, and in July 2008 a new agreement was agreed to extend the arrangement for a number of years to come with the provision of online directory enquiries being added to the service.

Telephonetics VIP is a market-leading provider of speech recognition and automated voice services within the UK, and their core offering is 'call-steering and self-service' for major multiplex cinemas. Part of this offering involves a movie-line product which acts as a centralised booking & information line for members of the public calling the cinema.

Telephonetics VIP found that for one particular cinema chain, around 5% of callers preferred to speak directly to an advisor, and not go through an automated process. Therefore the decision was made that the services of a contact centre were required to handle those calls. With KCOM Contact Centres being awarded the contract in March 2006.

The service was incorporated into KCOM Contact Centres bureau operation to provide the required flexibility to match staff resource to the fluctuating call profiles and high peaks that this service exhibits due to seasonality, high-profile film releases and evening & weekend peaks.

It has been KCOM Contact Centres ability to quickly ramp-up and ramp-down staff resources in response to continually changing call patterns that has made this partnership with Telephonetics VIP a successful one. And one that demonstrates that humans and technology can work in harmony after all.

KCOM Contact Centres have been working with Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council (BMBC) since March 2007. The purpose of the service desk is to provide case management for their telephony networks on behalf of Affiniti for BMBC. The type of requests can range from simple telephone system changes, faults and installations; to full network solutions and implementations.

The service desk requires the advisors to be able to liaise with contacts arising from a variety of sources. This could be from field engineers, BMBC office workers, third party contactors, account managers or councillors. KCOM Contact Centres provided the necessary quality of training so that the advisors had the skills to deal with these calls effectively and professionally; and additionally a knowledgebase was implemented to support the operation and keep everyone up to date with all products and services used by BMBC.

This approach has ensured that the operational team are in a position to be able to manage each case from first contact through to resolution, consistently providing the high quality of service required. This success has led to the scope of the cases managed through the service desk being expanded to include mobile & converged networks.

In April 2008 KCOM Contact Centres entered a long-term arrangement to handle directory enquiry calls for Connectivity on their 118800 number.

Currently this operates as a fixed line service. Connectivity however has also built a comprehensive directory of mobile phone listings for consumers and business people. It plans to use this to become the UK’s most comprehensive directory enquiry service by providing both fixed and mobile numbers, enabling people to contact each other in new ways.

Connectivity’s extensive research has given it a clear understanding of how consumers want their privacy protected. Therefore, in conjunction with KCOM Contact Centres, Connectivity has ensured that the technology that supports the service will put people in control of the experience. Connectivity recognises how personal a mobile phone is, so instead the service will make connections, leave voicemails or send text messages, all without disclosing mobile phone numbers.

This is a partnership that combines the expertise and strengths of both parties, and as a result presents a great opportunity for growth in the directory enquiries market.

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