When Lisa Presbury moved to Newcastle to establish a call centre for the Greater Building Society ten years ago there were no phones, no desks and no people. Today the call centre employs 75 consultants using state of the art systems at the Greater's headquarters in Hamilton.

Ms Presbury is still the centre's manager. She says the job is still challenging and rewarding and that there has been plenty of change over the ten years.

The key to a successful call centre, according to Ms Presbury, is teamwork and a genuine focus on doing the right thing by the customer. She points to the fact that the Greater's phones are answered by a person, not a machine.

"Unlike many other call centres, at the Greater we do not have endless lists of computerised options for customers to negotiate," Ms Presbury says.

The Greater places a great deal of emphasis on customer service. It has consistently achieved an overall 94 percent customer satisfaction rating in its independently conducted annual survey. In the call centre staff answer more than 90 percent of calls within 20 seconds.

"This means customers calling the Greater's Call Centre get fast, personal service," she says.

The Greater's call centre was one of only a handful in the Hunter when it opened in November 1996. The team of 20 staff started working in the area of personal loans and then moved into home loans. In 2002 a Customer Service Team was established to act as a central enquiry point for customers and as an internal help line for branch staff. In 2006 the team was expanded again to include insurance administration and outbound sales.

Ms Presbury says the centre has grown along side the Greater's expanding branch network to meet customer demands.

"Having branches and a call centre is about giving customers choice," she says.

She says her role is to be an enabler. She does lots of coaching, sharing of information and listening to her staff.

"We have a fantastic team who are very customer focussed and proud of what they do," she says.

"Our staff are the ones that provide the service to our customers so I ask them what they need to provide the best possible service."

Ms Presbury says that she jumped at the opportunity to establish a new centre from scratch. New Zealand born, she moved to Sydney in 1988 and worked in the areas of customer service centre training and administration. She saw the job at the Greater after leaving Sydney to travel around Australia with her Novocastrian husband.