VoIP take-up driven by 'virtual call centres'

Large office-based call centres are being replaced by VoIP virtual call centres where agents are split across a number of bases or even working from home or abroad.

And the benefits are not simply practical, as an Aberdeen Group survey of 150 companies found that in the best-performing 35 per cent of firms, these distributed agent practices resulted in at least a ten per cent boost in customer satisfaction following their implementation.

This is believed to be because VoIP calls are more likely to get through quickly to an agent who is well-equipped to deal with the customer's problems.

Alan Hubbard, Aberdeen's senior vice president of customer service and support and author of the research report, told TechTarget: "If you've got the right agents, call durations are going to go down as opposed to shuffling amongst agents. Not only does call duration go down, but satisfaction goes up."

Mr Hubbard added that the trend is clearly towards more firms signing up to VoIP as 20 per cent of the companies that responded to the survey have since moved from standard PBX systems to VoIP.