Domestic
call centre use from work is costing UK business more than £80m a year.
Research
by telephone software company NetCall reveals that more than 3 million calls are made a day to call centres with 23 per cent
of customers waiting
for an answer for more than two minutes.
Almost
24,495 hours of company time are spent hanging on the phone, which the study
claims adds up to a total cost of £62m per year in lost wages and £18m in unnecessary phone bills.
The
research finds that only about 20 per cent of calls are answered within 30
seconds and waiting time can be anywhere up to 20 minutes.
The
figures are also based on the lo-call rate of 5p per minute and only count
those on hold for two minutes exactly, so the real cost to industry could be
even higher, the report claims.
"This
is just the tip of the iceberg. In reality the cost to industry of unanswered
calls is likely to be many times greater," said David Rothschild, chief
executive of NetCall.
"The
net result of poor call handling is the customer switching to a competitor, 78
per cent of customers say they would go to another company if a single call is
handled badly – some callers waiting on hold would already say the call is
being handled badly."
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