APCC, the Portuguese Call Centre Association, honoured PT Comunicações – Business Customers Support Centre - with the award “Best Call Centre” in the telecommunications sector yesterday. The APCC Awards aim to honour the best contact centres each year and represent a strong contribution to the improvement of the quality of these services in Portugal.

To reach this award, PT Comunicações accepted the challenge set by APCC and, together with IZO Portugal, participated in a benchmark whose goal was to reflect about the rise of this sector and the possibility of improving a few relevant aspects. After an audit conducted by IZO, a consultancy, the Business Customers Support Centre of the company was

António Correia, head of Business Customer Service received the award and stressed that “the recognition contained in this award, apart from the additional confidence conveyed to us, makes us even more responsible for the maintenance of our efforts to keep delivering the best Business Customer Care service.

The award was delivered during the 5th International Conference CC Portugal 2009, whose theme was “The upside of a downturn: Strategic responses to the crisis”, which took place on 25 and 26 May and gathered in Portugal more than 250 experts and top managers from international organisations from different economic sectors connected with the call centre activity throughout the world. During the APCC-organised conference, which was sponsored by PT Contact, the participants discussed and shared their views on issues related to the sustainable development of companies at large and the role of the call centre activity in the current social and economic context.

It is worth mentioning that also in the scope of Contact Centres, PT is one of the big nominees for the ‘World Awards 2009 – Top Performers’ of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) area that honour the world’s best in the contact centre industry. The winners will be announced in June during the ‘Top Ranking Conference’.

PT has thirteen nominations in seven categories. PT Contact is nominated in categories: ‘Best community spirit’, ‘Best outsourcing partnership’, ‘Best outbound campaign’, ‘Best in customer service’, and twice in ‘Best recruitment campaign’. PT Comunicações was nominated for ‘Best technology innovation – internal solution’, and twice for ‘Best outbound campaign’ with the welcome services of Meo and of mobile broadband. In the ‘Best in customer service’ category, TMN is nominated with 1696 and 12030 services, and PT with the ADSL helpline. TMN is also nominated in the ‘Best outsourcing partnership’ category.

At the beginning of the year, PT Contact was the only company in the contact centre industry to be distinguished as one of the best places to work in Portugal, according to the ‘Great Place to Work’ survey.