Carphone Warehouse signs £3m call centre deal

The Carphone Warehouse has signed a three-year £3m contract with telecoms services provider Affiniti to build three IP call centres.

Around 1,800 customer service advisers will work in the centres, two of which are in the North West of England and one in South Africa.

Affiniti, which is part of Kingston Communications and will work with Cisco to build the call centres, is installing an "intelligent call routing system", which means enquiries can be distributed to different agents on different sites, depending on how busy the phones are.

Calls can also be placed depending on the agent's skills, ensuring requests can be answered by the right people. The system automatically recognises callers and provides agents with access to their history and preferences when they call.

The centres will take calls from customers using Carphone Warehouse services, such as Talk Talk, mobile phone service and, in future, broadband internet.