Carphone Warehouse has installed three new IP contact centres to help improve its customer support service, it was announced this week.

The centres were installed by communications integrator Affiniti in a contract worth approximately £3m over three years and involves the planning, provision, building and ongoing management of the Cisco-based contact centres.

Robert Kent, Business Relationship Manager for CRM at The Carphone Warehouse said that the new centres were necessary to keep up with the growth in demand from customers.

'We wanted all our centres to be VOIP because we wanted the flexibility over different sites so we can move the calls around depending on where the agents are so we can be flexible in our demand and supply,' he said.

Carphone Warehouse currently handles a million calls a month and expect this figure to rise significantly as more and more customers use the broadband product.

The centres are located in Preston, Birchwood and South Africa and will house 1,800 new customer service advisers to meet increasing levels of demand.

Agents will benefit from increased facilities such as CTI technology with screen pop-ups - callers are automatically recognised giving agents open access to their history and preferences. Calls can also be placed depending on the agents skills, ensuring individual requests can be appropriately answered.

Kent says that the centres will not just be used for customer services: 'There is an outbound element as well. We do sales through outbound telephony, so it's a revenue generator as well.'

Any new sites that Carphone Warehouse opens will also have VOIP.

What do you think? Email us at feedback@computing.co.uk

Further reading:

Europe overcharging for mobile call termination

Ofcom clears path to reduced phone costs?

Plusnet launches low-cost broadband and phone packages