Welcome to Call Center Basics
Call Centers are talked about everywhere these days - probably because they affect our lives in so many ways. Whatever product or service we may buy, on many occasions we will end up dealing with one. But first, how does one define a call center? Let's try; A call center is defined as the part of an organization that deals with inbound or outbound communications with customers. It is a centralized office of a company that answers incoming telephone calls from customers or makes outgoing telephone calls to customers. They can handle a considerable volume of calls at the same time and can also log calls. It is the focal point of customer service for most companies today. Using a variety of technologies including computer automation, call centers connect the customer and the organization to meet customer needs in real time. Call centres are critical to support the marketing and customer service functions of many large companies. Most top Fortune 500 companies has at least one call centre which employs an average 4,500 agents. More than $300 billion is spent on call centres around the world.
Types of Call Centers
Call Centers may be divided into various types according to their functions and areas of operation. Most commonly call centers are divided into inbound call center and outbound call center. In an inbound call center, agents receive calls from customers who need to obtain information or report a mal function. In an outbound call center, agents initiate a call to a customer mostly to sell a product or a service. Please click on the links to find out more on Call Center Types.
Call centers can be divided into three groups:
- Those that focus on outgoing calling
- Those that focus on incoming calls
- Those that are established to accomplish multiple tasks
BPO (business process outsourcing) is the act of transferring some of an organization's repeated non-core and core business processes to an outside provider to achieve cost reductions while improving service quality. Because the processes are repeated and a long-term contract is used, outsourcing goes far beyond the use of consultants. If done well, BPO results in increasing shareholder value. The main difference between BPO and more traditional IT outsourcing is that BPO offers companies a way of achieving transformational outcomes much more quickly. In a typical BPO contract, a service provider takes over a specific corporate function. Effective BPO encompasses much more than just changing who is responsible for performing the process. In BPO, the outside provider not only takes on the responsibility to manage the function or business process, but also re-engineers the way the process has been traditionally done. Re-engineering includes implementing new technology or applying the existing technology in a new way to improve the process. That tends to be the hard part.
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