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Thomson Virtual Call Centre ready for January peak
Thomson has completed the roll out of its new Virtual Call Centre and is gearing up to put it to the test in the peak January period.
The new system was put in place following the closure of its Glasgow call centre a week ago, with the loss of 420 staff.
Calls which once went to the call centre are now routed through to agents in the company’s high street stores.
So far 375 of the shops have been kitted out with the new call management system, which directs calls to the most highly skilled agent in a particular niche market.
Sales director Derek Jones said the next step was to remove many of the back office or administration tasks carried out by agents.
“In our travel agency business in Sweden, consumers are encouraged to go home and book their holidays online and have to pay a surcharge if they book in store. This means they are not taking any money and don’t have to carry out all of the back office functions,” he explained.
“We are not planning that in the UK right now, but it might be something we look at for the future when we move over to an online booking system.”
He said shop managers in Sweden generate around £2 million-worth of business a year, and consultants around £3 million.
“That’s because they are just purely taking bookings,” he said. “Some of our shops don’t even make that amount.”
He said the VCC will also allow Thomson to carry out major promotions with partners later in 2007.
“Instead of running a call centre where we have to get in extra staff to cope with the increased calls, we already have the distribution in place through our shop staff. We can run a major promotion with Nectar or the Mirror and our shops can take the calls,” he said.
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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