The changing face of contact centres: lessons from the UK

The UK Contact Centre Decision Makers Guide provides a deep dive into the latest trends shaping the industry. It highlights key challenges and opportunities. These include AI’s impact, workforce management and customer expectations. So, what can we learn from this year’s findings?

Operational Improvement: How Collaboration Drives Success

The Power of Reflection: A method for learning and driving improvement

Human nature dictates that we naturally find ourselves looking ahead. Looking forward to something sparks optimism and ambition. It shifts our focus to future ideas. This applies to planning holidays and birthdays, and to work challenges like budgeting and project planning.

The Learning Pyramid: A framework for Growth & Innovation

The Forum has advocated learning since its inception in the year 2000, with an ethos grounded in Raising Standards, this not only applies to our teams and organisations but to us as professionals.

The Evolution of the 8 Key Considerations

A Journey from Operational Efficiency to Purpose-Driven Workforce Strategy

Team Structure

Benchmarking key considerations for now and the future to understand best practice and readiness for whatever is next.

Operational Support Report from Douglas Jackson

Douglas Jackson have published their Operational Support Report for 2025 offering opinion on what 2025 holds for the Operational Support functions. As part of this, they collate Salary Benchmarking for Senior Planning and Insight roles. We have summarised the key points raised within this report along with the benchmarking salary information and thank Perry Fletcher for sharing this insight with us and our community. Follow the QR Code if you would like to read the report in its entirety.

The Challenge of Attrition

Attrition is a huge challenge for many of our members and we see a huge range, with external attrition ranging from 1.1% to 64%. For some, high attrition and rapid turnover drive up costs. They can’t deliver great service. For a few, low attrition can bring its own challenges.

Beyond the Benchmark

Understanding the true industry standard for service levels. In this article we will explore the origins of the service level along with the variations that are being used to understand the right metric for your organisation.

Shrinkage Benchmarking: understanding how we use time

What do the numbers mean and how can you compare your business against others?

Understanding Standards and Creating a Learning Culture

Benchmarking is a critical skill for every professional, however, so called “industry standards” are often out of date and represent lazy benchmarking. The Forum aims to promote and elevate the art of benchmarking from “averages” to actionable learning. This article is designed to support the data presented in this year’s Best Practice Guide, challenge your thinking and help you to draw out meaningful learning so you can do something different.

Challenging, Learning, Growing: The Assisted Learning Pathway Experience

Learning something new isn’t always easy. It can feel overwhelming, especially when juggling work, life, and everything in between. For those who joined The Forum’s Assisted Learning Pathway, it’s not just about learning new skills. It’s about changing how they think and work.

Innovation and Transformation: From HBOS 2005 to Indeed 2024

Over the past two decades, the landscape of customer operations and business transformation has undergone remarkable change. From HBOS in 2005 to Indeed in 2024, priorities have shifted dramatically, evolving from workforce flexibility and process optimisation to AI-driven insights and hyper-personalised experiences. This journey reflects a continuous push toward innovation, efficiency, and customer-centricity.

Partnership perfection: Shared Goals, Real Impact

2025 Hybrid Working in the Contact Centre survey results: how does your centre compare?

The Evolution of Planning

Some things will always matter. Businesses will always need to balance customer demand, employee needs, and business goals. Planning will still rely on data, but how that data is used will keep evolving.

Technology will continue to speed things up. AI and automation will take over more of the routine tasks, but that doesn’t mean planners will become less important.

2025 Awards Case Study: Betting on Innovation

How a Global Sports Betting & iGaming Leader transformed Workforce Management in the UK & Ireland

2025 Awards Case Study: WEM implementation in action

Novuna’s old contact centre setup slowed everything down. Verint helped streamline tools, improve scheduling, and slash digital response times. Staff now feel supported, customers get answers faster, and data drives improvements. Not just an upgrade—a whole new way of working.

2025 Awards Case Study: How implementation of Calabrio and AWS transformed customer service

Trainline revamped its contact centre with SVL. Call routing was simplified, handling times dropped, and coaching time rose. Tech did the heavy lifting, so teams could focus on helping customers. A solid partnership that made day-to-day work easier for everyone.

2025 Awards Case Study: Saving time and millions with digital workers

Aldermore automated 40 processes in a year, saving £3 million. With Robiquity and UiPath, they built 65 digital workers and upskilled their own team. The goal wasn’t just efficiency—it was to free people up for more meaningful work. And it worked.

2025 Awards Case Study: Redefining workforce flexibility

eBay wanted to give their customer service teams more control over their schedules. QStory made it happen. Shift flexibility skyrocketed, managers spent less time on admin, and employees felt trusted. The result? A system where everyone wins—better efficiency for the business and a happier, more engaged workforce.