Volvo Action Service, now part of Volvo Group Uptime Solutions, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. What began from a small team at Volvo Trucks’ Warwick Headquarters has now developed into a multi-lingual, purpose-built breakdown call centre.
Originally founded on 1st July 1990, Action Service Europe (ASE) – as it was originally called – was ready to start taking calls at midnight during the switch-over to the in-house breakdown service. After an anxious wait, the first call came in at 1am and was taken by Peter Bryant, who continues to work at the call centre today.
Soon, the new call centre was fielding calls with the efficiency that it is noted for today and, with the move to a Volvo-run operation, customers were noticing a significant improvement in the breakdown service.
The success of ASE attracted attention from Volvo Trucks’ head office in Sweden and the concept was replicated in Europe when, based on the original concept that was started at Warwick, a call centre was opened in Gent, Belgium, in 1993.
This quickly grew into a 24-hour multilingual call centre and training facility and remains central to Uptime Solutions’ operations, but further call centres have since opened in Lyon (France), Johannesburg (South Africa) and – in 2014 – Greensboro (USA).
Today, the UK call centre is located in the Volvo Group facility at Rugby and is part of Uptime Solutions, which provides round the clock support for Volvo customers – now including Volvo Bus, and Volvo Penta, as well as Volvo Trucks – world-wide.
“There have been some major improvements over the years, but at its heart, Uptime Solutions still has all the hallmarks of what we created 25 years ago,” says Greg Williams, who assembled the original team and still works for Volvo Trucks in Warwick.
