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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/financialservices/0,3800010322,39168767,00.htm

Britannia cuts call queues
Talk-to-machine option reduces customer wait

By Julian Goldsmith

Published: Wednesday 10 October 2007

Building society Britannia has rolled out a call management system at its Bristol call centre.

The centre is using Queuebuster from Netcall to offer customers the option to either go through the automated call-handling system straight away or to wait for a call agent.

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The move follows the acquisition of Bristol & West savings business and branch network for £150m last year. The Bristol contact centre handles direct sales and pre-sales enquiries.

The move follows a previous installation of the system at another Britannia call centre in Leek, Staffordshire. Britannia contact centre analyst Gerard Hearson told silicon.com that prior to the introduction of the system, the building society had experienced long call queues.

He said: "In Britannia's case, the Queuebuster message switches on and off at certain queue thresholds and provides the customer with an option for the fully automated callback. It was important that our customers were given this choice."