Concert hall makes sure callers don't sing the blues

Home of the Proms the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) has updated its call centre systems to make sure music fans don't get left hanging on the line.

The 5,000-seat venue gets 1.2 million visitors each year - and receives 520,000 calls through its contact centre.

silicon.com Retail & Leisure

Get the latest retail and leisure news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the R&L newsletter today!

Before 2006, the building was supported by two analogue telephony systems: one serving the box-office and one for back of house departments. One of these systems was more than 15 years old and was no longer supported by the supplier.

RAH director of customer relations Sarah Woods said as the number of events increased, the call centre functionality it had wasn't flexible enough. "When we had peaks in call traffic, for instance when tickets for an Eric Clapton concert went on sale, we didn't have any interactive voice response (IVR) or call messaging to help us. The old system couldn't provide the right level of customer care."

In early 2006, Woods decided a new system was needed - flexible enough to deploy functions when they were needed at peak times but would remain dormant at other times.

Woods said: "At peak times, when the system was coping with thousands of callers trying to buy tickets, we needed the IVR function to come on for callers who just wanted to know when tonight's show was starting and didn't want to get stuck in the call queue for tickets. In that way, we could provide a better service for all customers."

Woods installed an IP call routing system based on Avaya's 8720 platform, which was up and running by March this year. The system provides management information the organisation can use to balance calls across its contact centre. Woods has invested in three plasma screens in the call centre and is in the process of recruiting staff who will concentrate on the management of call information.

She said: "It's still early days but we've begun to see improvements in customer care, which is the more important benefit than reduction in cost of ownership. Certainly we're not expecting to see a continuing rise in call centre costs. We know our agents are dealing with more calls that end up in a booking."

Woods noted 12 per cent of calls are enquiries about show times, restaurant bookings and car-parking and is sure these customers are better served now.

For the future, the system offers the potential for wireless connectivity, which will be useful for the many back of house staff who are often away from their desks.