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What is a Call Center cvr

What is a Call Center?

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What is Contact Center Compliance?

A Call Center is a centralized department that handles customer queries, conducts survey research or provides customer support on a large scale using customer call center agents. Call centers handle a huge portion of customer interactions for brands all over the world.

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What is a call center used for?

These are some reasons as to why an organization may set up a call center:

  1. Customer service: Customer contact call centers for multiple reasons like product purchase assistance, product information, raising concerns and more. Call centers provide customer service by answering customer’s questions.  
  2. Technical Assistance: Also known as “after sales service”, technical assistance helps customers with queries or concerns they may have after a purchase. For example, if you purchase a new editing software and it has compatibility issues with your device, you may choose to call a call center to address this issue and provide a solution.
  3. Sales: A lot of outbound call centers will have the purpose of sales and/or marketing, hence will make calls to prospective consumers and give them information about their products and/or services.
What is a Call Center1

What are different types of Call Centers?

What is a Call Center2

Inbound Call Center

  • Inbound call centers specialize in inbound calls, hence are used to tend to incoming calls from customers with concerns or in need of support/help. The call center agents receive calls from customers who need instructions or need help to solve their problem, and will do their best to address the customer’s issue in the most efficient manner.
  • For example, if your wireless internet connection stops working, you may call your WiFi provider to help navigate where the issue may lie.
  • The main goal of inbound call centers is to resolve as many customer issues as they can in a specific time frame. Hence, their focus is on agent productivity and resolution times.
  • Key performance indicators of inbound call centers include Net Promoter Score® (NPS® ), first call resolution rate (FCR), and queue time.

Outbound Call Center

What is a Call Center3

This type of call center specialises in outbound calls. In these centers, agents make calls instead of receiving them. Examples of outbound calls are sales or marketing calls, and fundraising requests. There are also certain organizations that choose to welcome new customers with a “welcome call”, where agents provide the customer with information about the organizations and the products/services they offer.

Key performance indicators of outbound call centers include number of calls made and answer rate.

Virtual Call Center

What is a Call Center4

Virtual, or “cloud-based” call centers combine the services of inbound and outbound call centers using certain advanced features. Virtual call centers are easy to set up, can be operated from anywhere, and can be integrated with other existing tools such as a sales support system.

What is the difference between Call Center and Contact Center?

Call Centers

  • A traditional call center is an office where a large number of call center agents can provide customer service over calls. Some call centers may specialise in inbound calls, and some may specialise in outbound calls, but their mode of communication will always be the same: through telephones/calls.

Contact Centers

  • Contact centers, on the other hand, are more modern as they allow customers to reach out to them in more ways than just calling on a telephone. Contact centers can connect with customers online, offline, and over the phone. As customer expectations have increased with the availability of newer technologies, call centers have been trying to transition to being contact centers in order to facilitate connecting with customers through more modes, which will also increase the amount of customers they have access to. 
  • However, both call centers and contact centers have a pivotal similarity, and that is their common goal to improve customer experience.

What are the important Call Center software features?

Call centers need to ensure all the customer queries are handled efficiently. Here is the list of must have features for smooth functioning of call center, 

Call Supervision

  • Call supervision and monitoring allows supervisors to listen on call and participate in them, when required. This helps in quality assurance as supervisors will have the ability to intervene when the agent is not providing adequate assistance, or can be used to give feedback to the agent after the call.

Advanced Reporting for tracking Metrics

  • Recording advanced statistics of certain metrics will help the call center set a benchmark for agents’ services and can help identify when the call center is improving or becoming worse. For example, metrics such as service level and agent availability can be considered.

IVR and smart call routing 

  • This tool is vital as it helps establish which agents will answer inbound calls depending on the type of call. Additionally, it can be used to keep track of agent availability and activities.

Call Center KPI

The following are some key performance indicators (KPIs) of call centers:

Average Handle Time (AHT)

  • Average handle time denotes the time elapsed from when the agent answers a call until the agent disconnects. This is one of the most commonly analysed KPIs in call centers.

Agent Absenteeism

  • Agent Absenteeism is the number of days lost per year due to agents being absent as a percentage of total number of contracted days. This KPI will have significant impacts on scheduling and staffing within the call center.

First Call Resolution (FCR)

  • This KPI is directly related to customer satisfaction as it identifies the percentage of calls that the agent fully addresses the customer’s need without having to transfer or return the call.

Agent Turnover Rate 

  • Agent turnover rate is the percentage of agents who leave the call center to work elsewhere. This is a KPI that all call centers must track as it reflects team morale and employee satisfaction.

Average Time in Queue

  • Customers do not like waiting for a long time in a queue, hence a high average time in queue will worsen customer satisfaction. This is why it is important for call centers to track the average time callers have to wait in a queue before being connected to an agent.

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