A contact centre lives or dies on how quickly customers reach the right person. Our specialists build phone systems for contact centres of every size, from ten person customer service teams to shared service centres handling thousands of calls a day.
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 balancing 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.
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.
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.
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.
Customers want their problem resolved in one go. Routing by skill and a full view of past contact on every channel give agents the context to do exactly that.
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 for 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.
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.
Match each customer to an agent with the right language, product knowledge or authority to resolve the query.
Let callers check an order, pay a bill or choose the right team using keypad options before they reach an agent.
Tell customers where they stand in the queue and offer a call back instead of more hold music.
Calls, web chat, email, SMS and, where your plan covers them, social messages arrive in one queue. Agents never have to swap between screens.
Where your CRM integrates, agents see past calls, chats and orders as the conversation opens.
On plans with AI tools, suggested answers, live transcription and automatic summaries help agents resolve queries and wrap up sooner.
Forecast demand from past call patterns and build rotas that put enough agents on at the right times.
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.
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, leaving agents free to give the customer their full attention.
The number is matched to a customer record where your CRM supports it.
A short IVR menu or chat prompt records why they are getting in touch.
Routing picks an available agent with the matching skills and language.
An AI-generated summary logs the outcome, ready for the agent to check and save.
Phone systems for contact centres are built from five core tools. Each one has its own guide, which explains how it works and when a team needs it.
Inbound calls pass through an IVR phone system and automatic call distribution, which sends each caller to the right agent. Outbound teams use auto dialler software to place calls in turn and keep agents talking instead of dialling.
Calls are only part of the picture. An omnichannel contact centre brings chat, email and messaging into the same queues, and AI contact centre tools can answer routine questions and summarise calls.
Our phone systems for contact centres run all five on one cloud platform. Our guide to contact centre as a service shows how they fit together, and how a contact centre differs from a call centre.
Inbound calls
Outbound calls
For illustration purposes only. Screens are examples and do not show real systems or data.
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.
Talk to us about your contact centreUCaaS covers calling, meetings, chat and presence for staff outside the contact centre. Finance, operations and managers stay on the same system, and agents can transfer a customer to them in a couple of clicks.
CCaaS adds omnichannel queues, IVR, recording, quality tools and live wallboards for the frontline team. Seats can be planned around seasonal peaks, letting capacity follow demand through the year.
Contact centre seats sit alongside standard calling plans, which start from £8.99 a month per user, and only your agents carry the extra licence. Moving your existing numbers across is free.
Your total depends on the number of agents and supervisors, the channels you add, such as chat and email, and the reporting you need. Typical options are on our pricing page, and every quote lists each item clearly.
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.
We support service teams across the UK, including shared service centres with a business phone system in Birmingham and energy support desks in Aberdeen.
We also look after customer service operations in Belfast, university and booking lines in Bangor and recruitment teams in Barrow-in-Furness. Busy service teams in Bradford and Bristol have local guides too.
Run several client campaigns on one platform, each with its own numbers, greetings, reporting and recording rules.
Give retailers, utilities and subscription businesses a single queue for calls, chat and email, with the full customer history on screen.
Handle HR, finance and IT queries for a whole group from one centre, with menus that send each caller to the right specialist team.
Run outbound campaigns with preview and progressive dialling, and stay within Ofcom rules on abandoned and silent calls.
Manage repairs lines, rent queries and out-of-hours emergencies, with recordings that show what residents were told.
Support volunteers working from home with a softphone or on business mobiles, and route calls by region or topic so callers reach someone who can help.
Cope with booking rushes and disruption days using call backs, overflow queues and extra seats planned in advance.
Handle high volumes of billing, fault and switching calls, with IVR self service taking pressure off agents.
Many contact centres now rely on hybrid working, splitting their team between the floor and home. Moving from an old call centre phone system to the cloud gives home agents the same queues and tools, signing in through a browser or app with a headset.
Team leaders can listen in, whisper advice or join a call, wherever agents are working.
Unlike a hosted PBX or cloud PBX tied to one building, the platform runs queues from several locations, giving business continuity and disaster recovery for the whole floor. CRM integration shows each customer’s history, AI-generated call summaries cut wrap-up time and existing equipment can join through SIP trunking.
Overflow sites
FTTC and SoGEA give overflow and satellite offices dependable calling without the cost of a dedicated line.
See FTTC and SoGEA broadbandSmaller teams
Full fibre suits smaller contact centres and hybrid teams that need clear calls alongside cloud CRM and chat tools.
Explore fibre broadbandDedicated and uncontended
An uncontended leased line keeps call quality steady when every seat on the floor is busy at once.
Find out about leased linesBuying 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. Ask us about business broadband.
A contact centre is only as good as the thinking behind it, which is why we start with your customers’ journeys rather than a list of features.
We list every number, channel and menu customers use today, and agree where each one should lead.
Using past call data where it exists, we plan queues and seats around your real peaks rather than averages.
Illustration only. The business, callers, numbers and times are examples, not a live system.
Service levels, answer targets and quality scores are built into reporting from the first day.
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.
Two public-facing organisations show what the contact centre platform we install can do once queues, AI and payments work together.
Greater Manchester · Local government
The council replaced a switchboard where one operator routed 300 to 400 calls a day by hand with an AI call assistant.
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire · Housing
A housing group managing over 9,000 homes needed its contact centre agents to work from home at short notice.
Figures are those reported by each organisation in case studies published by our platform provider. These organisations use the platform through other partners and are not Blake Telecom customers.
Operations directors ask for proof before switching platform. The one we install won two Gold awards in 2026 and was named a Leader in the 2025 GigaOm Radar, and Corporate Vision has recognised Blake Telecom too.
Customer Service Team of the Year
The 24th American Business Awards in April 2026 gave the platform this title and Gold for Achievement in Management, along with two Silver awards and one Bronze.
Product UX
April 2026 brought Gold for the platform’s mobile workspace, which combines calls, video and team chat on one screen.
Contact Centre as a Service
The 2025 GigaOm Radar for CCaaS named it a Leader and Fast Mover after comparing contact centre platforms for functionality and rate of development.
These awards belong to the platform we supply, and independent user reviews can be read on Gartner Peer Insights.
Contact centres handle large volumes of personal data and card payments. Here is how the platform looks after data, recording and payments.
Certified Platform. ISO 27001, ISO 27017 and SOC 2 certification apply to the platform, along with Cyber Essentials, and personal data is handled under UK GDPR.
Secure Card Payments. Card payments during calls are handled with PCI DSS compliant capture, keeping card numbers away from agents and recordings.
Recording and Retention. Supervisors choose which agents and queues are recorded with VoIP call recording. Each call is held for 30 days in warm storage, extendable to 180 days, with cold storage for up to 10 years.
UK Data Residency. Customer records are kept in UK data centres, while video meetings are encrypted from end to end.
A UK-based team designs, builds and tests your platform before launch, then supports every site and team afterwards.
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.
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 adapt as our needs change. Blake Telecom’s knowledge and expertise have been very professional, and we look forward to working together on our future projects.
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 had found them years ago. We recommend Blake Telecom to many of our suppliers and even customers whenever we can.
When we moved to rural office space, without the benefit of reasonable broadband speed or any telephony services in place, Blake Telecom directed us to alternatives, and the solution we have is excellent. 4G Wi-Fi VoIP serves our current needs and situation perfectly. The team were succinct in their explanation of what we could achieve, providing something promptly and getting this set up with minimum fuss and delay.
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.
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.
A cloud phone system, which is also a hosted phone system or internet phone system, runs queues, recording and reporting in secure data centres. Unified communications and cloud communications bring voice, messaging and video into one agent screen.
MS Teams calling can be connected for teams that use Teams. Remote working phones, such as a softphone with a headset, let agents join the same queues from home. Our UK-based team sets up both for you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Real-time dashboards show calls waiting, service levels and agent status, and can run on a large screen on the contact centre floor.
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.
In most cases, yes. Your existing business phone numbers, from geographic to 03 and freephone, can usually move across. Customers keep ringing the numbers they already know.
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.
Replacing an ageing call centre system, adding chat and email, or setting up a shared service centre? We will show you how the platform would work for your agents and supervisors.
We plan queues and seats around your real peaks, configure the platform before launch and support your supervisors from the first day.
Our team is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5.30pm.
Reviewed by Aaron Barrowman, Engineer at Blake Telecom, on 22/10/2026.
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