Egg tops list of supermodel call centres

A competition to find 12 'pin up' call centres has been won by Egg, with a raft of other household names making up the rest of the dozen.

The search was initiated six weeks ago and focused on finding companies who have kept their staff motivated, boosted their morale and made them more productive.

An Egg spokesman said: "Our people are at the heart of everything we do so we've invested a great deal of time and energy in the creation of our second building. The space is visually inspiring but also practical. What we have created is an open plan, modern and technologically innovative environment."

Besides Egg, the runners up were Coventry Building Society (in Coventry), EDF Energy (Sunderland), Fujitsu (Staines), Halifax (Leeds), JD Williams (Manchester), Kwik Fit Insurance (Edinburgh), LloydsTSB (Bournemouth), Marks & Spencer Financial Services, National Express (Birmingham), RAC Motoring Services (Bristol) and Travelodge (Derby).

The idea behind the whole competition - run by Datapoint, an Avaya partner - was that all 12 will now appear on a calendar as 'model facilities'.

Heather McDonald, call centre manager at runner-up National Express, told silicon.com that her company stepped up a gear when moving premises around two years ago, consolidating four call centres into one, housing around 300 staff in Birmingham.

"Staff knew we listened to them [when we moved]. We built around the people and what they wanted," she said.

She said National Express had changed from being "very reactive". Leading edge automatic call handling software was brought in and applications such as instant messaging for agents were developed in-house.