BTIC responds to UK call centres' appeal
Extended product range designed to attack fast-growing market
BT Indirect Channels (BTIC) is opening up its call centre product range to a wider base of resellers.
Hoping to cash in on this growing market, the indirect selling arm of BT has claimed the UK call centre market is growing by 650 centres every year, and is putting the SME sector at the forefront of its strategy.
Chris Jagusz, general manager for chapter management at BTIC, said the firm's hardware-based Contact Central product, previously sold through an exclusive group of resellers, will now be opened up.
"We are looking for about 12 sizeable new partners to sell the product, which is aimed at large customers, with several dozen more to sell the hosted SME version, Contact Centre on Demand, which will be launched within the next two months," he said.
"A lot of the growth in call centres is in the SME market because IP telephony has enabled features previously available only to large corporates."
He added that the firm is specifically looking for partners that are familiar with CRM software.
BTIC has also announced the availability of two new call centre voice packages, which offer add-on sales for resellers.
The Telemarketing Services Business Starter is an inbound call package providing call centres with a variety of free and low-cost numbers, which resellers can sell on top of call centre roll-outs.
The vendor is also offering an outbound call package in the form of the BT Call Centre Offering. This fixed-charge service offers free calls of under 90 seconds.
Mark Evans, director at ME Consultancy, said this offering will be attractive to resellers.
"Call centres make lots of short calls so it looks like BT has got its act together," he said. "In the past we have not targeted call centres because BT did not have a good offering."