Garlands Call Centres
Reliable communications for leading-edge customer care
A growing number of the UK’s leading
mobile phone operators, internet service providers, financial
services companies and travel specialists trust Garlands Call
Centres with their most important assets – their customers.
To provide the highest service
standards while handling over 36 million customer enquiries each
year, the outsourced contact centre operator needs a communications
infrastructure it can depend on.
Our reliable, cost-effective
communications solutions have supported Garlands through phenomenal
growth – helping the company to lead the way in the provision of
innovative contact centre services.
Achieving excellence through
innovation
Serving many business sectors,
Garlands employs over 3,200 people at locations in Hartlepool,
Middlesborough, Stockton and South Shields. From humble beginnings
in 1987, the company has grown to become the third largest inbound
outsourced contact centre agency in the UK*. As part of a fully
resilient dual vendor solution, our communications network
continues to support this
expansion by enabling Garlands to meet
and exceed customer requirements.
Resilient network ensures 100%
reliability
With communications at the core of
Garlands’ operations, reliability is critical. “It’s not just our
business that’s on the line – it’s our customers’ business as
well,” explains Chris Colyer, IT Director at Garlands. “Customers
expect to get through to agents, quickly and efficiently, every
single time.”
Understanding that service loss is
simply not an option, ntl:Telewest Business has developed a
communications infrastructure with reliability in mind. “From day
one, the solutions we’ve put in place have been designed for
optimum resilience,” confirms Carole Wardrope, Account Manager at
ntl:Telewest Business.
Evolving the network
Between 2005 and 2007, Garlands
invested over £3m in advanced IP-based communications. The
company’s new ntl:Telewest Business network provides secure,
resilient and reliable connectivity, enabling multi-channel
customer contact and delivering significant cost savings. It also
supports a leading-edge IP contact centre based on third-party
software for contact and workforce management, recording and speech
analytics.
Our converged Metro Ethernet VPN
network connects all of the company’s contact centre locations and
supports data, voice and video communications. Using this network,
Garlands has implemented Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
telephony, enabling it to take advantage of advanced call
management functionality and reduce costs. Our IP-enabled network
has also enabled Garlands to create cutting-edge multimedia contact
solutions – such as a 3G video calling facility and live web
interaction – to help customers complete
self-service forms online.
In addition, a Managed Internet Access
service enables Garlands’ agents to connect seamlessly to
centrally-held client databases of customer history and billing
information, allowing them to answer enquiries quicker and more
efficiently.
Partnership for success
“ntl:Telewest Business has been our
first port of call when we’ve expanded our operations or added new
services,” comments Chris. “We’ve always found ntl:Telewest
Business to be commercially competitive and very responsive,
delivering the highest levels of
performance and resilience.” “They’ve also taken a lot of time to
understand what drives our business and have provided high quality
planning, implementation and support services,” he continues.
What it has made possible
Garlands’ use of technology to deliver
innovative customer contact solutions has resulted in recognition
across the industry. In July 2007, Garlands won the Best Use of
Technology category at the 2007 National Business Awards, North
East region finals for its IP converged infrastructure and IP
contact centre project.