The
use of work time by staff to telephone call centres that manage household bills
or other domestic tasks is costing UK business more than £80m a year.
Research
by telephone software company NetCall reveals that each day 3,195,000 calls are
made to call centres, with 23 per cent of callers waiting for an answer for
more than two minutes.
Almost
24,495 hours of company time are spent hanging on the phone, which adds up to
£62m per year in lost wages and £18m in unnecessary phone bills.
The
research shows 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.
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David
Rothschild, chief executive of NetCall, said, "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."
