Business Phone Systems for Contact Centres and Shared Services
A contact centre lives or dies on how quickly customers reach the right person. Our specialists have been building phone systems for contact centres since 2004, from ten person customer service teams to shared service centres handling thousands of calls a day.
Why Customers Give Up Before They Reach You
Customers rarely give a contact centre a second chance. If they sit through long hold music, get passed between departments or repeat their account number three times, many simply hang up and go elsewhere.
Behind the scenes, supervisors are juggling rotas, service levels and agents who may be in the office, at home or covering from another site. Without live figures, they are always a step behind the queue.
A cloud contact centre brings every call, chat and email into one place, sends each customer to an agent with the right skills, and shows supervisors exactly what is happening as it happens.
The Numbers Every Contact Centre Manager Watches
An outsourced customer service provider, a council switchboard and a sales team making outbound calls all measure success a little differently. Almost every contact centre, though, lives by the same three numbers.
Answer Times and Service Levels
Most centres promise to answer a set share of calls within a target time. Live dashboards and well planned queues make that promise realistic, even when demand jumps without warning.
Abandoned Calls
Every caller who hangs up is lost revenue or a complaint waiting to happen. Queue announcements and call backs keep far more of them on the line.
First Contact Resolution
Customers want their problem sorted in one go. Routing by skill and a full view of past contact on every channel give agents the context to do exactly that.
Call Recording and Quality Scoring for Coaching
Recordings let team leaders hear exactly how a call went, praise what worked and coach what did not, rather than relying on anyone’s memory of the conversation.
Quality management tools let supervisors score calls against a checklist, spot trends across a team and pick out examples for training. Speech analytics can flag complaints, sentiment or keywords without anyone listening to every call.
Our VoIP call recording stores each call in warm storage for 30 days, extendable to 180 days, with cold storage up to 10 years.
Taking payments by phone? Card details should never end up in a call recording. Use PCI DSS compliant payment tools, and tell callers at the start that calls are recorded, in line with ICO guidance.
Contact Centre Features Your Agents Will Actually Use
Good contact centre software should fit your volumes and channels, starting with smarter routing on day one and adding AI assistance and workforce planning as the operation grows.
Routing by Skill and Language
Match each customer to an agent with the right language, product knowledge or authority to resolve the query.
Interactive Voice Response
Let callers check an order, pay a bill or choose the right team using keypad options before they reach an agent.
Call Backs and Queue Announcements
Tell customers where they stand in the queue and offer a call back instead of more hold music.
One Inbox for Every Channel
Calls, web chat, email, SMS and, where included, social messages arrive in one queue, so agents never swap between screens.
My parcel was due yesterday and nothing has arrived.
I can see it left the depot this morning. Let me check the driver’s route for you.
Thanks, I just need to know if someone should stay in.
Share the delivery window and offer a text alert when the driver is nearby.
Illustration only. The screen shows example calls and customers, not a live system.
Complete Customer History
Where your CRM integrates, agents see past calls, chats and orders as the conversation opens.
AI Help for Agents
On plans with AI tools, suggested answers, live transcription and automatic summaries help agents resolve queries and wrap up sooner.
Workforce Management
Forecast demand from past call patterns and build rotas that put enough agents on at the right times.
Wallboards and Reporting
Live and historical reports show service levels, abandoned calls and agent performance, on screen or on the wall.
Start with what your centre needs now and switch on more as volumes, channels or sites grow.
What Happens in the Seconds After a Customer Calls
A well run contact centre makes several decisions before an agent says hello: who is calling, what they probably want and who can help. Getting those right is the difference between a quick fix and a transfer.
Routing rules, CRM lookups and AI-generated summaries do that work in the background, so agents can give the customer their full attention.
Caller Identified
The number is matched to a customer record where your CRM supports it.
Reason for Contact Captured
A short IVR menu or chat prompt records why they are getting in touch.
Right Agent Chosen
Routing picks an available agent with the matching skills and language.
Wrap Up Done for You
An AI-generated summary logs the outcome, ready for the agent to check and save.
From Office Calling to a Full Contact Centre
Many teams start with a simple hunt group and outgrow it without noticing. Because UCaaS and CCaaS run on the same platform, you can give contact centre seats to the team that needs them and keep everyone else on standard business calling.
Contact Centres and Shared Services We Work With
Every operation has its own mix of calls, channels and service targets. If you run a patient line for a practice or clinic, our page on phone systems for healthcare goes into more detail.
Outsourced Customer Service Providers
Run several client campaigns on one platform, each with its own numbers, greetings, reporting and recording rules.
In House Customer Service Teams
Give retailers, utilities and subscription businesses a single queue for calls, chat and email, with the full customer history on screen.
Shared Service Centres
Handle HR, finance and IT queries for a whole group from one centre, with menus that send each caller to the right specialist team.
Sales and Telemarketing Teams
Run outbound campaigns with preview and progressive dialling, and stay within Ofcom rules on abandoned and silent calls.
Housing Associations and Councils
Manage repairs lines, rent queries and out of hours emergencies, with recordings that show what residents were told.
Charities and Helplines
Support volunteers working from home with a softphone, and route calls by region or topic so callers reach someone who can help.
Travel, Leisure and Ticketing
Cope with booking rushes and disruption days using call backs, overflow queues and extra seats planned in advance.
Utilities and Telecoms Providers
Handle high volumes of billing, fault and switching calls, with IVR self service taking pressure off agents.
Running a Contact Centre With Agents at Home
Many contact centres now split their team between the floor and home. That only works if a home agent gets the same queues, tools and support as someone sitting beside their team leader.
Moving from an old call centre phone system to the cloud is often what makes this possible. Agents sign in through a browser or desktop app with a headset, and calls, chats and emails follow them wherever they log in.
Team leaders can listen in, whisper advice or join a call to help, so coaching and support never depend on sharing a desk.
Connectivity Built for Hundreds of Simultaneous Calls
Every agent on a call uses bandwidth, and so do screen sharing, chat and cloud CRM tools. For larger centres we recommend a dedicated line with a backup connection, so a single fault never takes the whole floor offline.
Full Fibre for Smaller Teams
Full fibre suits smaller contact centres and hybrid teams that need clear calls alongside cloud CRM and chat tools.
FTTC and SoGEA for Overflow Sites
FTTC and SoGEA give overflow and satellite offices dependable calling without the cost of a dedicated line.
Leased Lines for Busy Contact Floors
An uncontended leased line keeps call quality steady when every seat on the floor is busy at once.
Buying the connection and the contact centre from one provider means one support desk, one contract and no arguments about whose fault a dropped call was.
Our Approach to Designing Your Contact Centre
A contact centre is only as good as the thinking behind it, so we start with your customers’ journeys rather than a list of features.
Map Every Route In
We list every number, channel and menu customers use today, and agree where each one should lead.
Forecast Your Busiest Hours
Using past call data where it exists, we plan queues and seats around your real peaks rather than averages.
- Customer routes mapped
- Peak hours forecast
- Targets built into reports
Illustration only. Figures on the phone are examples, not a live system.
Agree the Measures That Matter
Service levels, answer targets and quality scores are built into reporting from the first day.
Prepare Agents and Team Leaders
We make sure agents and supervisors are comfortable with the new tools before the first live call.
The goal is a contact centre that stays calm on the busiest day of the year.
Analyst Recognition for the Contact Centre Platform
Frost and Sullivan named the platform behind our contact centres a leader for Contact Centre as a Service in 2025, and Gartner has placed it in the Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service more than once. See Gartner Peer Insights for user reviews.
Stevie Awards - Achievement in Management, Telecommunications 2026
2026
Gartner Magic Quadrant
2025
Frost and Sullivan - Contact Centre as a Service Leader, Q2 2025
2025
TrustRadius Multiple Awards
2024
Stevie Awards - Gold Winner 2026
2026
Recognition belongs to the platform. We look after the design, setup and ongoing support for your team.
Standards That Protect Customer Data
Customer Feedback on Blake Telecom
Director
Moving to rural office space, without the benefits of reasonable broadband speed, and without telephony services include, Blake Telecom directed us to alternatives and the solution we have is excellent. 4G Wi-Fi VoIP, serving our current needs and situation perfectly. The team were succinct in his explanation of what we could achieve, providing something promptly and getting this set up with minimum fuss and delay.
Director
Blake Telecom have been supplying our business communications for well over 10 years. We have found both their systems and support to be fully robust and they have given an excellent service throughout with value for money for their products. Their approach to helping our business has always been excellent from every aspect and I would highly recommend their services.
Director
Blake Telecom have revolutionised the way we operate. They have gone the extra mile in making the setup process painless and it was easy to install. Any questions are dealt with quickly and efficiently, and the staff are a pleasure to deal with. I truly wish we found them years ago. We recommend Blake Telecom to many of our suppliers and even customers whenever we can.
Director
Questions About Running a Contact Centre
What is the difference between a call centre and a contact centre?
A call centre handles phone calls. A contact centre manages calls alongside chat, email, SMS and social messages, with the customer’s history shared across every channel.
How many agents do we need before a contact centre makes sense?
There is no fixed number. Teams of five or six often benefit from a contact centre phone system once calls regularly queue or several channels need covering, and larger centres grow to hundreds of seats on the same platform.
What equipment do home agents need?
A reliable broadband connection, a computer and a good USB or wireless headset. No desk phone is needed, and home agents share the same queues, recording and reporting as the office.
Does it connect to our CRM or helpdesk?
Many widely used CRM and helpdesk platforms can be connected, showing customer details as a conversation opens and logging each contact automatically. Let us know which systems you use and we will check what can be connected.
Can we take card payments over the phone securely?
Yes, with PCI DSS compliant payment tools that keep card details out of recordings and away from agents’ screens. We will explain which option suits your setup.
What rules apply to outbound calling in the UK?
Ofcom expects abandoned calls to stay below 3% of calls per campaign in any 24 hours, with a short recorded message that names your company and gives a number to call back. Dialler settings help you stay within these Ofcom persistent misuse rules.
How long are contact centre call recordings kept?
Recordings are held for 30 days in warm storage as standard, extendable to 180 days, and cold storage packages keep them for up to 10 years for compliance or disputes.
Can we show live performance on a wallboard?
Yes. Real time dashboards show calls waiting, service levels and agent status, and can run on a large screen on the contact centre floor.
How quickly can we add seats for busy periods?
Extra seats can be added ahead of seasonal peaks such as sales events or renewal periods. Tell us your busy months and we will plan capacity around them.
Will our existing numbers still work?
In most cases, yes. Your existing business phone numbers, whether geographic, 03 or freephone, can usually move across, so customers keep ringing the numbers they already know.
What do phone systems for contact centres cost?
Costs depend on the number of agents, the channels you need and features such as workforce management or AI tools. Our VoIP pricing page covers standard packages, and we quote contact centres individually.
Ready to Take the Pressure Off Your Agents?
Whether you are replacing an ageing call centre system, adding chat and email, or setting up a new shared service centre, we can show you how the platform would work for your team.
Our UK based team is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5.30pm.
Reviewed by Glenda Jackson, Designer at Blake Telecom, on 25/09/2026.
Blake Telecom have been paramount to the growth of our business by continuing to offer our business the very highest level of service. The equipment we have been supplied has been extremely flexible allowing us to change needs. Blake Telecom's knowledge and expertise has been very professional and we look forward to working together on our future projects.