GrowthBusiness.co.uk: Your gateway to entrepreneurial success

Simon Daniel

Back to the future

Now the recession is apparently over, global companies are back to thinking about the future...

RSS

Market and Sector Type:: Software
Article Type:: Analysis

Next big thing: automated call-centres

Article Date: Aug 15 2008 Pete Swabey

Along with airport car parks and fake tan, call centres are one of the great ills of the modern world. A company based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Artingence, believes it has discovered the antidote.

Sales director Adam Rogers says: ‘We believe we are going to revolutionise the call centre industry. Rather than seeing it as taking people’s jobs, we see it as automating minimum wage jobs that pretty much nobody wants to do.’

Karl Dorner is the chairman and director of Artingence. Formerly the European systems director for global outsourcing specialist Convergys, Dorner set up the company in January. To make the automated call centre technology work, he and his team have brought together four pieces of software: artificial intelligence, voice recognition, voice synthesis and software integration.

The software creates “agents” who field calls. The number of agents can be altered according to customer demand. ‘It will definitely reduce costs – in regard to staffing, property, recruitment, holiday pay and sick pay,’ says Rogers.

Provided the beta-testing phase goes well, Rogers is confident that companies that have outsourced will bring the work back in-house and better quality jobs will be created. The company is concentrating on the UK for the meantime, where the software’s agents can cope with the country’s wide variety of accents. ‘It’s state of the art technology. You wouldn’t know that you are talking to a computer,’ he claims.

Rogers anticipates a trial will be signed with a global business shortly and expects the company to go for a listing with PLUS Markets by November this year.

Comments

There are currently no comments on this article

Save time and money with Outsourcery

Discover how streamlining and automating your sales processes can help ensure a shorter sales cycle and improved customer retention. Microsoft Dynamics CRM business software provides fast access to useful data in the office, at home or out at meetings. Download this free whitepaper to understand the business benefits

Out with the old, in with affordable.

Bring in IBM System x3650 M2 Express servers powered by Intel® Xeon® and dramatically lower IT operating expenses. Use IBM’s online evaluation tool to see ROI in as little as three months. Find out more

Google Business Apps

Google Apps lets your business save time and money by outsourcing email, calendar and office applications to Google. Just tell us a couple key stats about your business, and we'll estimate how much a basic Microsoft Exchange 2007 deployment would cost and what you could save with Google Apps.View Google Business Apps.

Research

Creative businesses face ‘analysis gap’

From video games developers to firms of architects, creative businesses of all kinds struggle to get adequate financing due to a misconception that they cannot be analysed systematically, claims a new report. The study comes from the Centre for Creative Business (CCB), a joint venture between London Business School and University of the Arts London.

Directors' Pay AIM 2009

What should an AIM company pay its CEO or FD?
What should a non-executive director or chairman expect to be paid?
What benchmarks should AIM remuneration committee members be using when
setting pay?

VCT Special Report 2009

This reports principle aim is to provide business owners seeking funding with information about the amount of funds that VCTs have to invest.

The Media Magnate Awards 2009

26th March, Vinopolis, London

Web-conferencing and telepresence

Oliver Thompson, MD of training firm Transphorm, claims to have saved around £5,000 a year through using video-conferencing.

The new cybercriminals

From Twitter to cloud computing, internet innovation is presenting new opportunities to the devious, and they are exploiting them to the full. We outline the main dangers and find out what is being done about them.

Copenhagen: a power failure?

Expectations were high for the Copenhagen Summit, but very little was achieved. We ask the winners of last year’s Rosenblatt New Energy Awards what went wrong.

Poll

Have your vote on current issues

People who read this also read

Biometrics in business
Though once the stuff of science fiction, identifying an individual through biological characteristics such as fingerprint and retinal patterns is gradually becoming a business reality.
Horizonte links with AngloGold
Explorer Horizonte Minerals has clinched a £3.3 million gold exploration ‘alliance’ for Brazil with mining group AngloGold Ashanti.
Relocating to the Thames Valley
The Thames Valley has been the butt of jokes and invective since John Betjeman willed ‘friendly bombs’ to fall on Slough. But it seems to be having the last laugh.
Exit strategist: Simon Cook
DFJ Esprit head honcho Simon Cook has a string of multi-million dollar exits under his belt, but he’s still on the lookout for more great early stage companies.

White Papers

12 Key Points to Consider When Selecting a Network Scanning Solution

Discover the 12 key points your company should consider before you evaluate and select a vulnerability assessment solution.

1Z0-040 Oracle Database 10G New Features for Administrators Practice Exam

Oracle 9i administrators can certify on Oracle 10G by passing this exam. The ExamForce 1Z0-040 Oracle Database 10G New Features for Administrators practice exam provides their unique triple testing mode to instantly set a baseline of your knowledge and focus your study where you need it most.