6 Call centre news Call Centre Europe Issue No. 92

AS PART of the company’s five-year plan, the LateRooms callcentre is to hire at least 20 morelanguage speakers by nextsummer for its call centre.

At present it has 190 staff,mostly full time, who occupy onefloor of a landmark 12-storeybuilding in Manchester called ThePeninsula. Three more floors areoccupied by other staff in thecompany.

The head of call centreoperations is Jo Helire-Glynn. Shesaid: “The business five-year planis to grow the LateRooms groupfive-fold in five years.

“The immediate plans areglobal growth, start ing withdeveloping our existing Europeansites, French, German, Italian andSpanish. The plans see usrequiring at least a further 20language speakers by summer2012.”

LateRooms established its callcentre in Manchester when thecompany opened for business in1999. First Choice Holidaysbought the company for £108m inDecember 2006 and inSeptember of the following yearFirst Choice merged with TUITravel. Last year, LateRoomsmoved to its present home, alongwith sister companies AsiaRoomsand Hotels-London.co.uk.

Now, the call centre handlesabout 900,000 calls each year.There are seasonal variations, butthe average is 21,000 per week. Inaddition, agents deal with about4,700 emails per week.

In a major investment,LateRooms commissionedSiemens Enterprise Communi -cations to overhaul its systems.

Siemens installed itsOpenSpace Contact Center, Call

Director with integrated IVR,Verint’s Impact 360 workforcemanagement software andSiemens’ IP system, HiPath 4000.

As a result, says Siemens,LateRooms has:

● Increased the call-to-bookingratio by more than 50 per cent,mainly by routing calls to agentswith the appropriate skil ls sopreventing repeat calls

● Cut the number of calls, againby using call routing, by 35 percent, despite a year-on-yearincrease of 50 per cent inbookings.

● Saved about £2m in staff costswith improved planning andworkforce management.

● Increased first call resolution.

All in all, says Siemens, theoverall cost per sales hasdropped by 50 per cent and thecost of the contract was paidback in 12 months.

The changes took just over ayear. The call centre director,Kaye Robertson, said: “We dideverything at once. It would havebeen nice to spread it out, but weneeded a ‘big bang’ approach.”

LateRooms finds possiblerecruits through its own web site,job sites and recruitment fairs. Ina recently reviewed inductionprocess, those hired have twoweeks of training and sales andfour weeks for service.

Other senior people at the callcentre include: Henry Cassin,sales manager; Karen Hyland,customer experience manager;Donna Carr, resource andplanning manager; and CarrieForshaw, training and recruitmentmanager.

The LateRooms call centre is inThe Peninsula, a landmarkbuilding in Manchester. Picturecourtesy of CEM Systems whichprovided an access controlsystem for the building

More staff on the way followingrevamp for call centre

LateRooms fact file

Number of agents: 190-plus at peak(80pc full time)

Call volumes: 4,000 per day/21,000per week (average)

Emails handled: 4,700 per week

Service level target: 80pc of callsanswered within 20 secs/60pc of emailshandled within four hours

Average length of calls: inbound, sixminutes/outbound, one minuteLateRooms’ head of call centre

operations, Jo Helire-Glynn

LateRooms’ offices were designed and fitted out by TSK, based in nearbySalford Quays. TSK’s contact centre specialist, Darren Woolstencroft, said:“Every contact centre is a community in its own right, and as such,communal areas have an important role to play.

Be it a kitchen or fully functioning cafe, these spaces draw in people fromdisparate areas of an organisation and bring them together to encourage valuableface-to-face communication and interaction.

“All of this helps to erode silo mentalities and improve the flow of knowledgeand information within a business, allowing best practice to be shared andencouraging intra-team motivation.

“To achieve this, we designed a large communal area with a Mediterraneanpiazza theme. While reflecting its brand aesthetic, the piazza has also become thebeating heart of LateRooms’ offices, allowing social networks to flourish andmaximising the potential for the cross-pollination of ideas between people, teamsand departments.”

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