Inkfish Call Centres was established in 1994 initially as PCS Telemarketing Limited, with the objective to become the best Contact Centre outsourcer in the UK. Having worked with other outsourcers in the past, it was obvious that in the early days of this industry the competition were solely talking about putting bums on seats to answer the customer’s calls. With that in mind, PCS made the decision that by recruiting, training, leading and motivating staff, the company could quickly gain an advantage over competitors.
Soon after its launch, Inkfish was awarded contracts with Linguaphone and Tracker to carry out their external sales. Excelling from the off, achieving sales that outperformed their own in-house sales teams by over 50%, Inkfish immediately proved its recruitment and training process was unique compared to that of its competitors. This subsequently led to winning business with the likes of Renault, SKY, British Airways Holidays, AIG, Tiny Computers and O2 to name just a few.
In 1999 a chance meeting with a brand consultant persuaded me that if the services of PCS were so much better than the competitions it needed a brand that stood out from the crowd – and accordingly Inkfish Call Centres was born.
Over 7 years turnover rocketed from 0-£26m with a 10% net margin, putting Inkfish seventh in the Contact Centre league tables from a starting position of lower than 200.
Business was booming, so much so that some new customers delayed passing new work to us as they thought we were growing too big too quickly; one of the downsides of growth.
Towards the end of 2000, I was approached by one of our customers who was looking to acquire a contact centre business to add to their existing call centre portfolio. They wanted to offer our service to their extensive list of customers. The offer was simply too good to turn down – and so, in July 2001, the business was sold to Domestic and General Group plc.
