Telemarketing researcher ContactBabel's third annual 'UK Call Centre Operational Review' asked more than 200 call centre directors and managers what proportion of customers they surveyed gave them the maximum customer satisfaction rating possible.
The telecoms sector had the lowest score at 43%, while public sector call centres had the highest, which was 85%. The finance sector scored the next lowest, with a satisfaction rating of 49%.
The report also found that the telecoms and finance sectors, together with outsourced call centres, were the worst culprits of over-dialling -- the practice of calling more numbers than there are agents available to take calls. This often leads to silent calls, which has become an increasingly controversial subject in the industry.
The DMA's best practice code says that the over-dial rate should be no higher than 5% in any 24-hour period. The average rate reported by respondents was 3.1%, but some admitted over-dial rates of more than 10%.
By sector, telecoms, finance and outsourced call centres reported rates of between 4.5% and 6%.
Telecoms and finance also receive the most complaints about the quality of the contact centre experience -- almost 1m in total.
Steve Morrell, principal analyst at ContactBabel and the author of the report, said: "While a figure of 1m complaints made about finance and telecoms contact centres look bad at first glance, we should remember that on average, each contact centre agent is complained about only once every five months, in which time they will have handled around 12,000 calls."
A free summary of the report is available from ContactBabel's and the full report costs £95 plus VAT.
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