Kingston say "outsource your customer relations to us"

In a move which it says will help businesses concentrate on their core activities Kingston Communications has launched a new call centre to handle companies most important and time consuming activity, customer relations.

The creation of the £4 million call centre in Hull, under the management of Kingston Call Centres, is the joint business venture of Kingston Communications, Waterfields Ltd, Keycom Group Ltd and Cambridge Venture Management Ltd.

The project is hoped to encourage companies to outsource their call management as corporations give off more and more activities to specialists. It means that call centre managers and administrators could be managing calls on behalf of more than one company at once.

A spokesperson told i-FM that: "Any business which has the need to receive, or make, a lot of calls would find outsourcing to a call centre more efficient. Companies are finding that outsourcing their calls rather than bringing in the resources to manage it internally, is more cost effective and allows them to concentrate on core business issues."

Kingston Communications chief executive, Steve Maine, commented: "The new business will target quality major companies seeking to outsource the management of their customer relationships on a long term basis."

With increased business usage of the internet and e-commerce, call centres are also offering companies the opportunities to outsource more technical issues such as e-commerce and the internet as well as just call centre telephony.

This new move from Kingston is one in a long line of the continuous growth of the popular call centre culture which is developing as one of the fastest growing employers in Europe.

The UK accounts for about 25% of the call centre industry and is set to grow by £2.2 billion in the next three years say commentators.

Julie Crisp