Computeach

Computeach is one of the UK's leading providers of IT courses and business skills and has been since 1964. This success, quite simply, is down to the success of the clients it works with who are provided with a wide range of distance learning programmes tailored to suit their exact circumstances and business objectives. Although a commercial organisation, Computeach works closely with Learn Direct and also assists potential clients in obtaining funding for their courses.

Learning Curves

mplcontact provides a 24/7, ongoing advertising response service for Computeach. Agents not only capture callers’ details and area of interest but also carry out a first stage filtration process which determines the type of response pack sent out to the caller. Computeach uses a single advertising response number across all their advertising channels, which include national, regional and local press, website, internet banner ads and click through responses, satellite and terrestrial DRTV, Teletext, direct mail and magazine inserts.

With the cumulative effect of all this advertising being a dramatic increase in awareness of Computeach and the services it provides, the organisation has found it impossible to manage all the responses themselves. This is compounded by the fact that Computeach does not use the traditional method of distinct campaign advertising and so has found it difficult to find a call centre that could provide a flexible, cost effective way of handling response.

Finally, in October 2003 they asked mplcontact to come up with a solution which has resulted in a continuous response service that, importantly, has a very low fixed cost element with service charges based purely on the actual time any mplcontact agent spends directly on answering Computeach calls.

The key to providing an efficient service was finding a way to manage the response from the type of TV advertising used by Computeach.

The preference for making heavy use of daytime slots booked at short notice, and low cost, means that predicting response levels is even more difficult than for clients with traditional campaigns. Most call centres would have no problem in handling campaign predicting response levels over a 12 month period averaging at 175 calls per day, with an average call handling time of 160 seconds. However, the response from Computeach’s campaign could not be further from this steady flow of traffic.

In one 24 hour period in March, mplcontact took just 53 calls with a success rate of 94% and achieved an average time to answer of 4.5 seconds. However, on a similar day in June (not traditionally the strongest time for this type of service), mplcontact took 575 calls, with a success rate of 92% and where the average time to answer only dropped to 7.4 seconds.

To manage these fluctuating demands, Computeach was able to take advantage of mplcontact's patented VSoIP technology, which allows multiple contact centres to be involved in answering calls and whilst maintaining consistency. This technical flexibility ensures very high efficiency rates resulting in cost efficient campaign management for Computeach.

Benefits

• Flexibility – Maximum agent efficiency is guaranteed during peaks and troughs of call traffic
• Cost effectiveness – mplcontact bureau service operates on “Pay as you go” principle
• Expertise – mplcontact call centre technology ensures consistency of service and quality at all times