By Samantha Williams 

So an independent audit was run in which participated a total of 100 UK-based online gambling companies. The results revealed a better state than before on the context of marked improvements in customer service. It’s for sure they didn’t want to gamble with their revenues and proved once again that the brewery-owner is essentially a teetotaller. Though the report kept the fact hidden between the lines, but it shall be unfair to claim that they didn’t commend these gambling sites for winning over other sectors in the UK market; namely, retailers and broadband service providers. What were the areas that came under the inspection? The audit marked the sites on different key grounds on which the improvements occurred. The first one is on the grounds of being tech-savvy (live chat and security issues); secondly, it is on the basis of performance on the other aspects (e.g. accuracy, response speed etc.). A whopping 61% from last year’s 7% and Talisma, one of UK’s leading customer interaction management solutions providers is now adding a few more to the existing list of questions for a better assessment in the future. They expect the responses could have been more accurate (perfectionist’s syndrome?) that way and would have revealed more than the 12% increase in offering an online chat facility by the sites or the fact that 90% of the telephone calls are answered within less than ten seconds or the improved email support that went from 60% in 2006 to 74%. May we have a glimpse of what was asked? Sure! But since we cannot provide the exact transcriptions, we shall swan the subjects on which the questions were set. 

• The minimum deposit/bet amount to open an account.

• Choice of currency to open an account.

• Various customer service criterions.

• Areas of improvement, inclusive of responsiveness, personalisation, newer channels for interactions, information accuracy and a few more.

• Tracking previous correspondences with past customers.

 When asked about their feedbacks on the survey, Jon McNerney (Vice president, International operations, Talisma) commented - “While it is encouraging that the UK online gambling sector has significantly improved customer service in 2007 there is still huge scope for improvement. In a growing competitive market, customer acquisition and retention is the key. UK gambling websites have a global customer base that wants easy access to information and immediate responses to enquiries, particularly when their money is quite literally at stake. Gambling websites need to evolve a customer-focused strategy that provides high quality, round the clock support and empowers agents to manage an increasing number of interactions across a growing number of communication channels.” However, improvement shall set its position as a constant as technology progresses and since there exist further chances of improvements in terms of online knowledge base and personalized phone calls, the day is not very far to see Talisma wearing an extra feather on its laurel.

By Samantha  Williams

As an eventual sequence of offline gambling, like horse racing, lotteries, sports events, Bingo, casinos, slot machines, roulette and Poker and so on, the scenario changed to the inevitable Internet in 1995.  The U.S. Company launched the website with comparatively a fraction of the investment needed for starting a Casino in Nevada in millions of dollars.  With just 17 employees it managed the show to run with 18 different casino games.  Just from this starting point there was no looking back and the proliferation of hundreds of institutions jumping the band-wagon of running websites for online gambling continued.  Interestingly governments of foreign countries evinced interest on opening their own sites for conducting online lotteries in multi-various languages with an eye on the abundance of potential existing for online gambling and millions of dollars on revenue just for the taking. 

In 1996, the Stock Market of U.S. announced listing of the stocks of online gambling ventures and this opened up the awareness among many others as well that what online gambling is all about and what is in it for them.  A large contingent of U.S. gambling organizations running their outfits in their localities joined the stream by extending their activities on the cyber-world.  The profit margins published were amazing – while the entrepreneurs were accustomed to 8 to 16% margins in their real world casinos after the laborious tasks involved being handled tactfully, the net-world gains were over 24% by the U.S. Company started the game.  In the first year itself another Company netted a turnover of $48 million which was so glaring too many eyes.

The U.S. federal governments did not keep quiet, perhaps by the lobbying of the vested interests and woke up to curtail the run-away success of online gambling, for fear of loss of revenue actually due to them.  Almost all the U.S. States formulated laws to regularize the online gambling transactions, declaring them illegal and transfer of funds for wagering by financial institutions inside the country was stringently curbed.  The legal jargon as usual was elaborate to cripple the activities of online gambling sites. 

This necessitated the online institutions to circumvent the procedures of incorporation of gambling establishments by registering in other countries and conducting financial transactions in banks of offshore and online net-banks.  This made the efforts of imposition of restrictions futile and the online gambling goes on unabated with the support of netizens the world-wide and also Americans with offshore bank accounts.

Even by a conservative estimate, a staggering 20 million people take part in some of the online gambling games.  Judging by the growth in the last decade in all the countries, where more and more people are fancied by the online games and also the potential existing for expansion of online gambling sites, it is estimated that by the year 2020 there will be a mammoth population of 160 million people playing online gambling.  The overall market that is to be tapped in the years to come is projected to be a scintillating $49 billion.

So by any yardstick, online gambling is very healthy and will go up by leaps and bounds in the years to come.