Banks get most call centre customer complaints

Public sector call centres have the highest customer satisfaction rates while financial services and telecoms sector call centres receive the most complaints, according to a new study.

The third annual UK Contact Centre Operational Review by analyst ContactBabel found that 85 per cent of callers to public sector call centres gave them the maximum customer satisfaction rating possible.

The IT sector was a close second but financial services and telecoms came off the worst with fewer than half of customers giving the maximum satisfaction rating. Financial services and telecoms also received the most complaints about quality of service - with almost one million customer complaints between them.

But Steve Morrell, principal analyst at ContactBabel and author of the report, argued that this figure actually disproves the argument that call centres are unpopular with customers.

He said: "While a figure of one million complaints looks bad at first glance, we should remember that on average, each contact centre agent is complained about only once every five months, in which time they will have handled around 12,000 calls."

The study also found that the average number of calls handled by each agent and the average amount of time spent dealing with each one has increased on last year. An agent now handles 16 calls per hour, up from 15 last year.

The report is based on interviews with more than 200 call centre directors and managers and is sponsored by Altitude Software, Genesys and Yorkshire Forward.