Date published: 01.09.08 - not release date

Amcat praises customer's decision to abandon AMD (Answer Machine Detect)- Excell Contact Centres highlights the benefits of better customer service management and 100% compliance

Manchester, UK, 27th February, 2007 - Amcat, a global leader in customer care & interaction solutions, is behind steps taken by existing outsource customer, Excell Contact Centres to turn off AMD (Answer Machine Detect) functionality on ALL its outbound campaigns. Based in Irvine, Scotland, Excell has reported no loss in productivity (an argument the industry has typically used against rejecting the use of AMD), and also reports how it has improved customer service and gives 100% guarantee of eradicating silent calls.

Excell Contact Centres’ General Manager of IT & Telecoms, Charles Vincent said, “I admit that initially we had doubts when Amcat suggested we turn off AMD as we thought it would have a detrimental effect on the volume of successful contacts made. However, this has not been the case, as it’s had a positive effect on performance and it also means that the customer will never experience the annoyance of a silent call due to AMD false positives.”

He explains, “The average consumer is becoming more savvy when it comes to recognising the delay that sometimes occurs before speaking to a live person and associating it with a sales call. At this stage, when the customer puts the phone down, it is frustrating and demoralising for contact centre staff as they have lost a potential sale before the conversation has even begun. Not only that, when the person being called has to wait to be spoken to, the agent often needs to work harder to compensate for a call that starts off on the wrong foot. We have found that it’s simply counter-productive to focus simply on the volume of calls being made, and although it’s fair to say that numbers of connected calls per hour has declined without AMD, the success of those calls is proportionately much higher.”

Amcat’s MD Phil Hagen commented, “We fully support Excell’s actions and are working with other customers to ensure that compliance and customer service is high on their agendas. Since Ofcom brought out its regulations last year it was clear that the minimum drop rate was 3%, our recommendation has been NOT to use AMD and to reap the additional benefits this creates in other areas such as improved conversion rates and long-term customer loyalty. Abandoning AMD also puts compliance beyond question because there will be no silent call breaches. We expect other major outbound customers to follow Excell’s lead over the next few months.”

Amcat has produced a white paper on ‘Building a compliant organisation’ that can be downloaded from their website www.amcat.co.uk

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Editor’s Notes:

About Amcat:

Amcat™ is a leading provider of contact centre solutions. With an Amcat IP-based contact centre platform, organisations can guarantee that each customer interaction is intelligent and productive, increasing employee morale and customer satisfaction. The Amcat customer contact platform ensures that companies align their entire organisation around customer care, providing better service at lower cost. As a result, companies profit from better customer acquisition and retention metrics, and ultimately, more revenue and profit. Today, Amcat is helping over 2,000 companies delight their customers while improving efficiency, increasing productivity and enhancing professionalism. For more info visit www.amcat.co.uk <http://www.amcat.co.uk> or call 0161 772 7100.

About Excell:

Excell's clear focus is to set the next standard in outsourced contact centre and BPO services by improving our client experience and exceeding all their expectations. Our management team has considerable expertise in Inbound and Outbound call handling and specialised BPO services.

The transition to a single global brand for all the businesses was made in December last year will ensure a consistent approach to global markets, harness the full power of the global pool of business talent and provide a uniform global brand under which the company will market itself.

The new global brand will now encompass 19 call centre facilities across the globe, including nine contact centres in Australia, one contact centre in the Philippines, seven contact centres in Canada and two contact centres in the UK. In addition, the global brand will include the recently formed Australian company Stellar Business Process Solutions, which specialises in document management, workflow automation technology and business process outsourcing services.

The global brand now employs over 6,000 staff and manages in excess of 300 million customer interactions every year on behalf of some of the world's largest and well-known brands. The new brand poses a significant challenge to some of the established global outsourcing players due to the specialist domestic focus each company has, combined with the strength and support of a global organisation.

For more info visit www.excellcontactcentres.com or call 01294 225 300

Press Contact: Jane Moores, TTA Communications LTD. Tel: 00 44 (0) 845 658 0120 or 01225 731 317. e-mail: jmoores@ttauk.com

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