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 whilst handling over 36 million customer enquiries each year, the outsourced contact centre operator needs a sophisticated communications infrastructure it can depend upon.

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 next generation 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 high-performance 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 £4m in advanced Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications to support its rapidly expanding business. 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 connects all of the company’s contact centre locations and supports data, voice and video communications. Using this sophisticated network, Garlands has implemented Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony, enabling it to take advantage of advanced call management functionality and reduce costs. Our next generation IP-enabled network supports 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 gives Garlands’ agents the ability 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 extended 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."

Thanks to locally accessible expertise and the can-do attitude of our people, we have become a trusted partner in Garlands’ expansion.

Chris continues, "They’ve also taken a lot of time to understand what drives our business and have provided high quality planning, implementation and support services."

What it has made possible

Garlands’ forward-thinking attitude towards technology has resulted in recognition across the industry. In July 2007, the company 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.

Our advanced communications network continues to support Garlands in its vision to lead the way in innovative customer contact solutions. Through inspired use of IP-based communications, Garlands is revolutionising service provision to better meet the needs of its clients – and their customers.