UK Call Centre Recommendations

Anyone use any?

[jweighell]

I'm looking into outsourcing my incomming calls for taking orders and general enquiries. Wondered if anyone here uses any such services?

I have had one quote although they're wanting a minimum spend of £500 per month and charge 65p per minute. Quite a lot more than I really wanted to spend since I have quite a low call volume - maybe around 10 calls a day...

I really can see the benefit of having a large phone number listed on my site, but being a one-man-band, it interupts the flow of my work taking calls and is awkward when I have a lot of orders to pack.

Cheers,

Jonathan

[budgie]

I must admit this is something I've been looking at as well. I'm always wary of using call centres though to take orders and for enquiries, unless you only have a couple of products. I'm not convinced they will ever know enough about the products to adequately assist customers.

To answer your query though, alldayPA have a service specifically for taking orders - I think it's £150 setup and then 95p per call. The only problem I see there is that there are a lot of call takers there, so I'm not sure how the training works and how much info they will really be able to handle. They are 24 hours though, which is useful.

Another one I know of is Moneypenny - from what I understand you have one person (or two max) that handles everything to do with your company. This sounds quite good as you can really train that person thoroughly. They're only 9-5 though I think, and I don't know what their fees are.

Hope that helps! Let us know how you get on as I'm sure there are others that would be interested too.

[potato95]

I am in a similar situation, one man operation and no time to answer the phone. I no doubt miss sales as my tel number is rather more discrete than I would want. As with so many small businesses I would love to employ somebody to help take calls but just can't afford it, that next step-up is a big one.

I am also sceptical about being able to afford a call centre service and even more worried about the quality of service that might be received.

If you find a solution then let us know.

[bekyed]

"I must admit this is something I've been looking at as well. I'm always wary of using call centres though to take orders and for enquiries, unless you only have a couple of products. I'm not convinced they will ever know enough about the products to adequately assist customers."

A call centre does not have to know about your products, they just take orders for you and email you the details.
If you are looking for someone to actually take orders from your website expect to pay big bucks as customers like to chat, i would estimate perhaps 50p per minute and 500.00 per month.
We do ok with order taking and our bill is around £300 per month all in.
We have a customer service line which i run myself and if any queries arise they can call me or i will call them.

Bek.

[Phil_C]

For a short period while away, I used GoResponse. We were setup quite quickly and the charges weren't too bad.

[marcusbond]

Long term we've come to believe it neccessary *not* to encourage customers to call... instead putting the effort/money savings into producing/providing the information customers want/need from your web site...

...otherwise you end up spending more and more of your resources (time/money) on servicing a customerbase who are only happy with this high level of service-on-demand over the phone...

...and who consequently reduce your long term profits, thus reducing your ability to fund your businesses growth.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

We handle customer service via an online secure messaging system.

It means that we can do the work ourselves with a couple of (cheap) people in business hours even though our customers span many timezones...

I suspect it also helps our CSR staff (1) keep their cool with some customers (2) do fraud screening more objectively (3) keep a record of discussions.

Rgds

Damon