2.6 seconds average call answering time

With an average call answering time of just 2.6 seconds on July 18, small business telecoms provider Unicom could be considered a cool operator.

But July 18 wasn’t just one of the hottest days of the year - it was also the day Unicom completed its headquarters and call centre move from Manchester city centre to Northenden.

The temperature was 35 degrees C outside, we had doors off hinges, packing cases all over the place, contractors and electricians running around - yet we’ve just reviewed our July performance, and the call centre management team and staff still managed an average call answering time of just 2.6 seconds on the 586 calls received that day from our telecom customers. Fantastic, said Chris Earle, Operations Director of Unicom.

We did have a couple of glitches: 4.61% of calls took six seconds or more to answer, and one did take 26 seconds - but that one actually came in before we were due to open, and we answered it anyway.

That sort of performance, plus one of the highest customer retention levels in the telecoms industry confirms for us that the UK-manned customer call centre is the only way forward.

The July 2006 move was the completion of a lock, stock and barrel transfer from city centre Manchester to Universal House in Northenden, near Manchester Airport.

While it actually took several weeks of planning and preparation and several days to move, there is always going to be a nervous edge to things when the last plug is pulled at one location and everything transferred to another.

We took 586 calls, 559 of which were answered by a customer service adviser in that average of 2.6 seconds. Our contact numbers are standard 0161, standard rate numbers, and we don’t have any ’press zero, press one Ö’ etc recorded voices.

The first voice a customer hears, usually after about two seconds, is a human voice.

We’re a relatively small business with a small, closely-knit and efficient management team - and we are absolutely clear in our minds about what makes the difference to our customers: a UK call centre with real people answering the telephone, around 98% of calls answered within six seconds, and managers and directors who are hands-on and accessible.

Our customer retention level is currently running at 86% against a sector average of around 70%. Of the 14% we lose, only a third go to competitors, the remainder being businesses that close or move premises for one reason or another, which is obviously beyond our control.

Unicom has 50,000 customers, primarily small or owner-managed businesses with telephone bills of approximately 1,000 a year. The specialised nature of the telephony and broadband products offered by Unicom provides significant savings for its business users.