Britannia Rolls Out QueueBuster After Successful Pilot

Cambridge, UK –Leading building society, Britannia, has launched a new call centre tool that lets customers hold in a queue without being stuck on the phone.

Following a successful pilot, Britannia Building Society is rolling out an innovative call handling system – QueueBuster from call centre technology vendor Netcall - that holds the customer in a virtual queue, letting them hang up and get on with everyday life. It then calls them back when they have got to the front of the queue - just as if they had chosen to hold in person.

A Britannia Building Society survey revealed more than half of people (54 per cent) said their personal banking experience would improve if someone was to ring them back to save them holding.

Commenting on the success of QueueBuster, Tim Franklin, Britannia's Managing Director, Member Business, said: "At Britannia we recognise just how frustrating it can be to be kept on hold and we are committed to providing a top class service, as well as always looking at new ways of improving our customer experience.

"This new call back tool is so successful that we have halved the number of callers hanging up before their call is answered. It has also resulted in an 82 per cent increase in calls being answered within 20 seconds - now that's great customer service!"

Richard Farrell, Technical Principal at Netcall added: “We are obviously delighted that following a successful trial and thorough competitive tender process the benefits of QueueBuster were clear for Britannia. Increasingly organisations are realising that by offering customers the choice of requesting a call back rather than waiting on hold, they can improve the customer experience while meeting service level targets. That has to be a win-win solution for the call centre industry.”


Britannia Building Society is the second largest mutual in the UK with three million members and a network of more than 250 branches. Its contact centres in Leek (Staffordshire) and Bristol receive between 3000-3500 calls per day and all customers have the choice to use the QueueBuster system or hold in the traditional manner.

All Netcall applications run on the Netcall Intelligent Communications Platform (ICP), which has been built on industry standards to ensure full cross-platform support. Netcall has integrated its solutions with all leading ACD platforms, Carrier switches, Network Routing and CTI Systems and is a member of the Avaya, Cisco and Nortel developer programmes.

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Editors Notes

• For further information about Britannia Building Society contact Karen Holt/Jayne Scarratt in Britannia Group Communications Department on 01538 393883
• For further information about Netcall, please contact Lorraine Jenkins or Tris Clark on 020 8339 4420 or netcall@wildfirepr.co.uk
• TNS surveyed 1,387 UK adults, aged 18-64, between 13 - 20 July 2006

About Netcall
Netcall is a UK company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. Based near Cambridge, Netcall develops and supplies innovative communication solutions to organisations of all sizes, including many blue-chip companies with global contact centre operations. As the leading specialist in callback, auto-messaging and contact solutions, Netcall helps organisations globally to increase profits and productivity while improving customer satisfaction and employee morale.
Solutions are deployed either on-site or as hosted managed services using Netcall's Intelligent Communications platform (ICP). The company has more than a decade’s experience of owning and running a high-availability service platform co-located with international carriers. Netcall's customer list includes BT, BUPA, First Direct, Halifax, London Borough of Islington, Lloyds TSB, npower, Prudential, RBS (The Royal Bank of Scotland Group), Thames Water, United Utilities and Vertex
Visit www.netcall.com for more information.