Maureen

Flexible, friendly service from KC Contact Centres keeps people calling Maureen

KC Contact Centres provides outsourced customer contact services for a wide range of public and private sector clients, offering inbound and outbound services including telesales, order taking, market research and data cleansing.

As part of East Yorkshire IT and Communications provider KC, it had provided local and national directory enquiries services for many decades, so when the UK directory enquiries market was deregulated in [2004] it was ideally placed to offer its service to the new 118 operators which emerged.

“Hello, it’s Maureen, how can I help you?”

One of the first of the new operators to enter the market was Independent Radio News Ltd (IRN), which branded its 118 212 service as ‘Maureen’ and launched it with a memorable promotional campaign.

KC Contact Centres began operating the service on behalf of IRN in December 2004. Its decision to partner with KC was based on a range of factors including the commercial agreement on offer and the quality of the service KC could provide.

Head of KC Contact Centres Tony Jopling explains: “IRN was looking for a partner who could provide a responsive and efficient directory enquiries service to its customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

“Directory enquiries services are characterised by high volume, short duration calls and call patterns that fluctuate considerably, and not necessarily predictably, depending on the time of day, day of the week and even the time of year.

“Fundamental to providing the Maureen service in a way that makes commercial sense for IRN and ensures excellent customer service for the people who call Maureen is our ability to flexibly manage staff resources and shift patterns in response to these peaks and troughs.”

Award-winning service available over the phone and online

This approach has resulted in consistent achievement of agreed service levels and national industry recognition, with KC Contact Centres winning the prestigious ‘Wholesale Directory Enquiry Provider of the Year’ award for its delivery of the Maureen contract on two occasions. In July 2008 the partnership between KC Contact Centres was extended to include the provision of online directory enquiries.

Tim Molloy, Managing Director of IRN said “When people call directory enquiries they want fast, accurate service. Partnering with KC Contact Centres means we can provide this 24/7, ensuring customer satisfaction and repeat calls.”