By Lisa Burroughes, 29 July 1998 06:15
NEWS Thousands of new Cable & Wireless Communications (C&WC) customers have been told they may have to wait up to 20 days to be allocated a telephone number after their line has been installed. The database that allocates numbers has a massive backlog, which the telco claims is due to the amalgamation process of the four merged telcos databases'. C&WC is currently transferring all the data collected by the four companies - Bell Cablemedia, Mercury, Nynex and Videotron - to an ICMS (Integration Customer Management System) developed by Nynex in conjunction with IBM. The new system will have all the customers' details on one central database, which can be accessed by the virtual call centre - also in the process of being formed. A C&WC spokesman said: "We are working as hard as we can to resolve the problems, but given the scale of the work it is entirely regrettable that some customers will inevitably suffer. We have been making compensation payments and the bulk of the data transfer is now completed." The company is now in the process of merging all its existing call centres into one virtual centre, closing down a number of centres in the process. The whole system will not be fully up and running until September. It is also investing over £100m into customer service facilities, including hardware, software and staff. The problems have been intensified by the closure of its Lewisham centre on Friday because, the company claimed: "It had a knock-on effect." C&WC also said the problem has reached its peak and will be resolved in a couple of weeks.
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