Ansaback News

On Tuesday 31st August, at 2.57 pm, Ansaback contact centre passed yet another important milestone in its 12 year history. Call centre agent Kim Cook took Ansabacks 13,000,000th inbound call.

It's a very exciting time in the call centre when a significant milestone is nearing, with all agents wanting to take that all important call. Ansaback awards prizes and fun activities for the call centre agents to mark the celebration.

13 proved to be lucky for Kim, so well done and a big thank you to everyone for your continued endeavours, loyalty and support in helping to push Ansaback forward to the even greater milestones to come.

Ansaback goes from strength to strength and we look forward to announcing the 14,000,000th call very soon!

Ansaback, the Suffolk-based bureau contact centre, has just achieved a significant milestone by signing up their 60th telecoms client. Requiring 24/7 support, this new client is the latest addition to take advantage of the exceptional service that Ansaback is renowned for.

Providing communications companies with round the clock support, Ansaback encompasses a range of products from lines and broadband; to VOIP and mobile; to raising the fault with the relevant carrier or provider.

Matthew Taylor, Telecoms Manager at Ansaback, said: “Ansaback has been providing telecoms solutions for over six years now, and we are delighted that this venture has been so successful. We started off with just one solitary client raising line faults on eCo Repair, and this has steadily increased to our current total of 60 clients using more than 10 different portals. We continue to work extremely hard on behalf of our clients to ensure that we are providing a seamless experience to the caller; in many cases replicating the service that the client provides in-house.”

Ansaback agents have undergone telecoms training, to ensure that they are able to handle and report fault calls.  Thanks to our in-house software solutions provider, CallScripter™, agents are able to handle incoming and outbound calls in a friendly manner; proactively tracking a fault from start to finish to ensure that they are cleared as quickly as possible, whilst keeping the end user updated at all times.

The calls received within our contact centre and our dedicated desk service provision are continuously monitored and as a result this is an ideal opportunity for us to reward the most hardworking and committed agents within our company. Each month the Ansaback team leaders and supervisors nominate the best performing agents for the ‘Call Centre Agent of the Month Award’.

The winners are based on various factors such their overall quality of their telephone answering skills, best adherence to schedule and generally going above and beyond the call of duty. The reward gives them well deserved recognition for their extra hard work and the cash incentive given shows our gratitude. The winners in August were Claire Roper (above) and Amy Prime (right).

All at Ansaback were very proud to present a cheque to EACH recently following a years fundraising on their behalf. The money was raised via a series of events including dress down days, coffee mornings, competitions, sweepstakes and a sale of unwanted christmas presents !  The more adventurous call centre staff took part in the very competitive Ransomes Olympics (who also won the event - go Team Ansaback !), and the Santa Fun Run round Christchurch Park in somewhat adverse weather conditions!. All of the events have been great fun and generously supported by all the staff which resulted in a total amount raised of £1090.00.  This is a tremendous achievement given the challenging climate and all staff are to be congratulated on their efforts.

This is a 120 mile bike ride, overnight from Hackney in London, to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast.

Christian Pawsey, Commercial Director of Ansaback contact centre, Ipswich took part in the Dunwich Dynamo on Saturday 24th July – Sunday 25th July.

Christain said 'It sounds extreme, but is an experience never to be forgotten. Bikes on the train from Ipswich to Liverpool St and then a short cycle to the start point by a park in Hackney. There were 1,400 cyclists at the start, wearing all manner of brightly coloured cycle clothing so it must have looked quite strange.. We were told it wasn’t a race and the organisation was relaxed as some cyclists drank a beer or two in preparation and the photocopied instructions were handed out. Bikes started drifting off North from around 8pm and we started soon after.

As soon as we thought there would be enough ahead to show us the way. And that is how it turned out; we followed each other out of congested, dirty and noisy London streets, over the M25 and into Essex as it grew darker. Lights on in Epping Forrest and we joined the endless stream of flashing red cycle lights as it got darker. I can’t remember all the villages and towns but through the Essex night and places like Finchingfield and Sible Headingham, (a nice village hall open for tea and sandwiches around half way) before Sudbury on the Suffolk border and onto Needham Market, Framlingham and finally, sign posts for Dunwich.

We arrived some time before 5am, a little weary but surprisingly fresh. The queue for breakfast was already getting longer as groups of new finishers joined the growing crowds. I’ve had many English breakfasts, but few so well-deserved as this and several cups of tea later we took a short walk on the beach before driving home to catch up on our sleep! We had left our car there on Saturday but many London cyclists were swimming in the sea whilst waiting for trucks and buses to take them and their bikes home. I thought the cycle ride was enough, but already looking forward to a repeat performance next year'.

Dear team at Ansaback

On behalf of the member agencies of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), I would like to thank you for your very kind donation of £600 towards our Haiti Earthquake Appeal on 28th January 2010!

The Haiti earthquake on the 12th January 2010 measured 7.3 on the Richter scale. It left thousands of people without homes and in need of humanitarian aid.  Your donation will initially help provide life-saving aid such as water, food, household items; medical supplies and shelter equipment.  

In addition to providing immediate aid relief, the DEC Member Agencies in collaboration with other organisations, are assessing the recovery needs to support destroyed livelihoods and reconstruction of homes and schools over the next three years. To date £101 million has been donated to our appeal and your donation will make a significant contribution to this work.

Once again thank you for your donation!

Please donate to the DEC Haiti Earthquake online at www.dec.org.uk

The January 12th earthquake was the worst to hit Haiti in 200 years. Up to three million people live in the most affected areas. Survivors lost family, homes, livelihoods and essential services. The DEC needs your support to help the Haitian people rebuild their lives.

The DEC launches and coordinates national fundraising appeals for public donations on behalf of its member aid agencies.

New independent research by GfK Mystery Shopping, shows that smart companies are improving their customer service to beat the economic recession. The findings reveal that contact centre queues overall are getting shorter, with 96% of callers getting through the very first time compared with 93% last year and that 66% of customers speak to agent's in less than 1 minute compared to 58% in 2008.

The report looked at elements such as menu options, transfers between agents and follow up calls and finding that 92% of callers felt that contacting a contact centre was easier than it has been in the past. Agents remain very knowledgeable with 83% agreeing that contact centre representatives had good product knowledge and the ability to resolve customer queries effectively. 94% of customers enquires where resolved in the first call.

86% of callers were either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their contact centre experience, with 43% of these being extremely satisfied. These happy customers are having a positive impact on brand perception; only 33% of callers had a high regard for the organisation prior to the call whereas after the call experience, 59% of callers said that they had an enhanced perception of the organisation.

The results are taken from the 2009 Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service benchmarking initiative, sponsored by Genesys and Noble Systems, which is one of the largest mystery shopping exercises in the UK. Over 17,000 mystery enquiries were made to the leading contact centres in the UK, in retail & distribution, financial services, telecoms & utilities, public sector and entertainment, leisure and travel. Each call was rated using over fifty criteria across five key areas: timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalised service and awarded a customer service rating in % terms.

The most improved sector was entertainment, leisure & travel which saw its score rise from 82% in 2008 to 86% in 2009. Telecoms and utilities also improved year on year, increasing their overall customer service rating by 3% to score 85%. The overall average score for the call centre industry increased from 83% in 2008 to 84% in 2009, with those contact centres taking part for the second year seeing an average 2% increase.

For the first time the study looked at email communications, which is becoming more important in this digital age. However the report shows that there is still room for improvement. With more and more contact centres realising that it is important to be able to communicate with customers effectively via their preferred method, they are working to improve the standards of their email communications.

“With overall consumer and business spending reduced, it is more important than ever for organisations to deliver outstanding customer service, this will help attract new customers and retain existing ones in these tough economic times. The results of this study clearly show that call centres are rising to the challenge and that smart companies are investing and encouraging outstanding customer service” commented Simon Thorpe, Programme Director, Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service.

Source: Press Release (Top 50 Call centres) www.callcentre.co.uk

The Institute of Fundraisers National Convention is a 3 day event that is put together by fundraisers, for fundraisers. The convention hosted a wide range of seminars presented by highly experienced and interesting speakers which proved to be very popular.

The exhibition featured many different companies from various sectors, from promotional items, software solutions, inbound/outbound call handling and many other services designed specifically for the Charity sector.

Ansaback were very pleased to be part of this prestigious event. 

Following the disappointment of England's early departure from the World Cup, all eyes are now firmly 'set' on the tennis and Andy Murray for a win at Wimbledon.

 To get our call centre agents into the spirit and following the Wimbledon tradition, the management team ‘served’ all employees with fresh strawberries and cream throughout this week, which went down a treat!

In addition to this, employees had the added ‘advantage’ of an extra dress down day.

Good luck Andy, we are all behind you!

Christian Pawsey, Ansaback Call Centre Commercial Director, competed in the 2nd annual Great East Swim, at Alton Water near Ipswich recently.

3,000 swimmers braved the 40 mph gusts and driving rain that day, to complete the 1 mile course on the reservoir near Holbrook, Ipswich. 200 people set off at 30 minute intervals, with different coloured swim hats for each wave. Christian, pictured here before the race, was in the ‘sky blue’ wave with the start delayed for 20 mins to wait for the not-so-sky-blue wind and rain to subside.

The choppy waters and horizontal rain eventually died down a little and they all set off, hoping just to complete the course rather than record a good time, as the conditions were so difficult.

One or two brave (!) competitors decided not to wear wetsuits and a Spiderman wetsuit lifted spirits of those waiting to take the plunge...

38 minutes and 22 seconds later, Christian emerged exhausted and relieved after zigzagging round the course and beating last year’s time of 39 minutes. All the training had paid off and the improved time was a personal achievement, especially given the wind, waves and rain that day. “I’ll be back next year” he said.