What is a Call Center?
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Call centers for small and medium businesses
Call center also known as the contact center is a specialized organization that handles all information processing and treatment via voice speech. A call center can work in business interests and for company-customer either. Being a part of call center services a contact center also takes care of all incoming and outcoming emails, regular post, faxes and everything regarding online chats besides of the inbound and outbound calls. Mostly call center is a system of effective feedback from the consumer of goods and services, support, promotion of various actions or any social polls.
Call centers history
The first “Automatic Call Distribution” has been produced in 1973 by American company Rockwell Galaxy. However, the similar purpose system Private Automated Business Exchange (PABX) became popular in the mid-’60s. The active development of the call centers industry starts from this time. Understanding of manufacturing more sophisticated tools for mass service calls transforms into a business model in the direction of automated and remote customer service. Consumer boom in the USA, Japan, and Europe leads to active consumerization of business, the appearance of multi-million client bases for its maintenance and retention what creates completely new methodologies.
Simply put, the goal of whether it call center or contact center is processing and maintenance of all inbound messages by prearranged script or scenario for the further information collection in order to make an analysis and statistics.
Experts believe that call centers are a temporary solution – they will be squeezed out by online web tools. The same as regular operators, remote employees are economically more profitable. In fact, from the point of view of business logic, it doesn’t matter at all if a person receives a response by phone, email, fax or just visited a corporate website. Traces and leads should remain anyway, and the logic of contact processing and information extracting stays the same.
Types of call centers
Call centers can be divided into 2 types: outsourcing call center and corporate call center. Let’s have a more detailed look:
Outsourcing call center
It’s a specific organizing method when its services being provided remotely with obligatory comprehensive call center training of operators in the area of customer consulting regarding the range of goods or services given by leasing company. During the efficiency analysis of building the supplier’s feedback with the customer, using this method has revealed high economic feasibility. The second option is when the organization of mass communication doesn’t require a permanent solution.
Corporate call center
It’s a physical company’s department that performs functions of working with customers or partners. The main costs when employing your own call center are: purchasing both hardware systems and software system, staff recruitment and training, office rent, salaries, taxes plus monthly bills.
Why call center is an integral part of any business?
The fact is call center doesn’t consist only of hardware and software systems – advanced call center technologies for intelligent routing and transferring of incoming calls, but also of employees: operators and managers. It should be obvious that the efficiency of the call center strongly determined by the human factor – the professionalism of the staff is not the last point. Moreover, nowadays the call center is a part of the company integrated into it. In fact, it changes the vision of how to conduct business and strongly assists to do it. At least in the area of modern and actual customer relationship management systems (CRM).
A call center is an integral part of any business that has active contact with people
From our long-term practice of providing call center services, we have clearly seen they have an undoubted effect in terms of business development. Today the call center is an integral part of any business that has active contact with people: banking, telecommunications service providers, major credit and insurance agents, etc. In a competitive environment, the winner is the one who has the best customer feedback. If the client can anytime receive advice from you – this is an obvious advantage for your business. All the answers your customers receive have to be simple and informative. Besides all of that, customer satisfaction scores can be reached if you are providing support in the customer native language. Combination of all these achievements together with professional telecommunication equipment show as high results as you couldn’t imagine.
Create your own call center in just one day:
Front Desk Helpers offers you a fantastic opportunity to create your own virtual call center with remote professional and bilingual operators. We work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in all business time zones. Sounds good? Fill our Request Consultation Form and get a free consultation on how to outsource your job processes on significantly lower salaries. For just $10 hour per one operator, your business has never been so flexible. Just let the professionals set up and take care of maintenance for your physical call center workstations or your remote needs to streamline the job process. Working remotely and autonomously makes it possible to free up useful time and concentrate on business development!
Or – we can also help you to create your corporate call center in 3 easy steps:
This is the easiest way to get professional telecommunication equipment for your company’s needs. Creating a workplace for your office employees has never been so light and acceptable. Give them comfy telecommunication opportunities and make them more productive and flexible. Our call center workflow will help you to automate your working processes with your current office staff and even connect and set up a new phone line and get its additional benefits. Increase employees productivity using our tools for the cost of just 3 cups of coffee and your profitability will be boosted simply and efficiently. Call center workplace costs just $15/month per member including equipment, multilingual technical support and all necessary customizations and consultations. The workplace is ready for your operators.
Front Desk Helpers is the official partner of Google Сloud. Each of our employees is using a G-suite package for technical online solutions. All information is stored at the cloud-based platform and protected by HIPAA Compliance. The hardware part of the equipment we use represented by Cisco, Fortinet and Polycom companies. Learn more.
3 main features of a perfect call center:
- An interactive voice system (IVR) allows automating routine procedures that previously were taking precious time (for example automatic providing background information about the customer’s own current balance). According to statistics – the number of calls processed by IVR can reach 65–70% of the total number of calls, which saves the operator’s resources directing them to solve more complex tasks.
- Provide a message on how much time the customer has to stay on the line before the operator can give a response. Statistics show that customers who receive this information wait 1.5–2 times longer than customers who have not been provided with this information. As a result, the number of unserved calls is decreased numerously.
- Use a telecom platform for operators’ resources management. This increases operators’ discipline by available ways of tracking their alive work. A manager has to observe if the operator doesn’t perform unacceptable actions: delays, not answering the call, serving the call for too long and others. Record detailed statistics over a certain period of time (day, week, etc.)
Why does your company need a call center?
A perfect call center beside of processing of inbound calls can handle outbound calls practice as well. This requirement appears from the necessity to conduct a sociological or any other sort of surveyor for example to organize support for direct research.
So, the processing of outcoming calls can be used for polls promotion, offering additional or new services and getting feedback regarding quality assurance and customer satisfaction.
Small and medium businesses nowadays can easily afford to have their own call centers due to the benefits they bring. Modern call center services are affordable for many companies, both remote call centers and hosted call center solutions for receiving inbound calls and making outbound either. A virtual call center services are in demand for a number of small regional companies too. Having and using on a daily basis your own call center is a requirement of actual circumstances to receive necessary orders, attract customers and communicate with them. Thanks to advanced call center technologies we can use temporary staff for special events to optimize the company’s expenses and save the budget.
We invite you to learn more about our capabilities and use the cost calculator for remote employees to evaluate the benefits of working with us!
Front Desk Helpers Co, 2019. Change your business mind!
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