Call Center Services Introduction
When many people hear the phrase "call center," they probably imagine long distance telephone companies. Those who are old enough remember the days when the only serious contenders for long distance service were the big three – AT & T, MCI, and Sprint. Commercials would show the employees working in call centers happily switching customers to their long distance company. Employees were seen working in cubicles, wearing headsets, and typing customer information into computers. Those images are a good introduction to the physical look of modern call centers. Call center business, however, has branched out quite a bit and now serves every industry imaginable.
There are three types of call centers:
- In-house - The company directly employs, manages, and houses its own call center employees
- Outsourced – The company hires another firm to handle its call center needs. These outsourcers process calls for multiple clients.
- Work From Home – This is a newer innovation in the call center industry which takes advantage of telecommuting. Contractors, called "home agents," work from their own homes by utilizing their PC's and a high speed Internet connection as well as a traditional phone line. This type of set up is referred to as a "Virtual Call Center."
Any of the three call center types above operate as one of the following:
- Inbound - Agents answer only incoming calls which consist of taking orders, answering account inquiries, processing requests for sales literature or free products offered by the company, taking complaints, and general customer service .
- Outbound - Agents are hired to makes sales calls (telemarketing) which include trying to get potential customers to purchase a product or subscribe to a service. In some instances there is no selling involved; those calls may include surveys or informational messages such as encouraging citizens to vote for a particular candidate.
- Combination - Some agents handle both kinds of calls. A popular option is for agents to take incoming calls when they are available, and then to use downtime when the phone lines are quiet to make outgoing calls. One way or the other, they are constantly on the phone.
A growing trend in the call center industry is for inbound agents to "cross sell" and "up sell" when taking an order. They are expected to offer the customer complimentary products to those that were ordered or encourage the customer to buy a more expensive version, longer subscription, etc. Sales and marketing consultants tell company executives they are leaving revenue on the table if they are not following these practices. Customers may have a different attitude so the decision to implement cross selling and up selling should be made carefully.
Most call centers are organized in tiers, which means that phone calls are routed to agents based on knowledge and experience. That is one of the reasons the VRU (Voice Response Unit) will instruct callers to say or press certain numbers depending on the nature of the calls. When Tier 1 new employees are trained, they can handle simpler requests and get comfortable with those before handling tougher issues. Supervisors and internal help desks are also considered Tier 2 or higher depending on the operational needs of a particular call center.
Call centers often come under fire from many directions including consumers, customer service advocates, and the agents themselves. Complaints from consumers and customer service advocates revolve around poor and inconsistent quality of service, impersonal service, and the inability to follow up with a particular employee if necessary. Call center employees criticize stressful working conditions, low morale, high turnover rate, and the improper way they can be treated by clients.
Call center software automatically disburses calls evenly among the agents and monitors various things about each call. Managers and supervisors can check on hundreds of employees at once. With a single glance at a computer screen, bosses know which agents are on the phone with customers and how long they have been connected. Software also provides the queue system which is usually a computer monitor or an LED screen mounted on the wall that shows how many callers are waiting to be connected to customer service reps and how long the wait has been for the person on hold the longest.
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