Telephoning a call centre can be frustrating at the best of times, let alone when the person on the other end of the line speaks in broken English! Regardless, some businesses choose to employ the services of overseas call centres in a bid to cut costs but a survey conducted by YouGov (2007) revealed that more than half of the 96% of the surveyed individuals who said that they had had a bad experience when phoning a call centre cited foreign centres as their biggest bugbear, due to regular miscommunication.

Strong non-native accents in a call can cause frustrations for both parties. Clear communication on the phone for services such as insurance and banking is especially important since even the smallest mistake can cause unnecessary problems for customers. If someone has to request something from the call operator more than once during a call, they are likely to feel dubious that their request has actually been met and this in turn could see them deciding not to use the service – and the business responsible – again in the future.

Since the majority of customers are aware that costs are the reason behind a business’s employment of a foreign call centre, they are hardly going to feel very valued if they call customer services and someone with poor English picks up the phone. Whilst setting up a local call centre can be significantly more expensive than using international services, outsourcing call handling to a UK business specialising in such can greatly reduce the financial dent.

Businesses which use one of W1 Office’s phone answering services (either singularly or as part of a virtual office package) will be pleased to know that all of our call centres are based in the capital of the UK. Even better; all of our staff members will answer your business calls as if they are working right in front of you, adhering to any call scripts or protocols that you might provide.

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