Serco signs contract with Ideal Shopping to provide contact centre services for all UK customers
The international service company has announced that it has signed a new 5 year contract with Ideal Shopping, valued at £17m.
Serco will provide customer contact services for all customers for Ideal World, Create & Craft, Lead the Good Life and Pets & Wildlife brands.
The service will be run from the UK, with contact centre operations in Peterborough in the UK, and Mumbai in India.
Serco will deliver all aspects of customer contact including customer acquisition, customer enquiries, inbound and outbound sales, credit applications, payments, order processing, and white mail and e-mail handling. It will also have opportunities to increasingly support web transactions and purchases and in the future deploy innovative service solutions including web chat and online advisers.
Dedicated sales training programmes will be implemented for frontline staff to maximise sales effectiveness. The contract will employ 160 people with existing members of staff in Peterborough transferring to Serco, with their terms and conditions protected. As well as protecting the existing jobs, current projections indicate that 40 new jobs will be brought into the city within the first 12 months. In India, all existing contact volumes will transfer to Serco and will be located out of new premises in Mumbai.
“We made a strategic decision to seek a partner with a dedicated contact centre facility, who could work with us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall customer contact service” says Mike Hancox, CEO of Ideal Shopping. The efficiencies and effectiveness that Serco will bring to customer contact will enable us to focus on our core TV shopping operation.”
Jerry Benson, Managing Director of Serco’s UK and Europe Global Services private sector business, said, “This partnership is an exciting opportunity for Serco. It is the first contract that will be operating out of the UK and India as part of Serco’s new Global Services capability, and demonstrates our capabilities as a key contact centre partner in the retail sector”.
