6. Call centres

In the past, when a customer wanted to talk to someone in a company they would usually be able to telephone and be put through to the right person who could help them.

Many companies didn't like this because while people were talking to customers on the phone they weren't doing their normal jobs. Customer service was a smaller part of their jobs.

ICT made it possible for large call centres to be created. These can be a room or large office where staff are employed to do nothing else except take telephone calls from customers and sort out their problems.

This is efficient for an organisation because staff who should be doing other things don't get disturbed.

Company costs are reduced because a call centre could be located anywhere in the world where there is a cost advantage in terms of wages and office space rental.

Many UK businesses have set up overseas call centres. So, if for example, you wanted to book a plane ticket or ask for your bank balance, your might find yourself speaking to someone in another country.

Other technology has helped make call centres operate very efficiently. When a customer rings, they usually have to choose from a menu option. This routes them into the correct queue e.g. a bank might have a 'savings queue', a 'new mortgages queue', a 'loans queue' and an 'account enquiries queue'. This saves the company time and money because the customer is doing that part of the work for them.

The number of customers waiting in the queue is displayed on a large electronic board in the call centre along with how many calls have been answered that day and how many customers have hung up without getting their call answered.

Calls can be monitored and recorded thus making it easier to confirm what was said and agreed. They can also be used for training purposes to give examples on calls which were dealt with very well or badly.