The call center is an office that receives and transmits a large number of phone calls. The phone calls are primarily dealing with a large volume of requests. The call centers are of two types inbound and outbound. The inbound call enters deals with the incoming calls. The incoming calls are primarily associated with the inquiry made by the customers regarding the product information.
On the contrary, the outbound call centers largely depend on the telemarketing. Apart from the telemarketing the outbound call centers are involved in collecting charitable funds, donation for political parties, market-oriented research, and collection of debt.
Features of Call Center Industry
According to Creaghan Harry, the call center is the workplace for the agents associated with the call center. To run a call center, it is essential for the place to have a proper infrastructure that includes computers, telephone with a headset that is connected with the telecom switch. The call centers always have an adjacent supervising station.
Most of the time the call centers is associated with computer networking stations. The computer networking station is corporate; hence it comprises of LANs, microcomputers, and mainframes. The voice and data path is integrated within the computer telephony.
The call centers have a contact center that manages the contacts of the customers. The contact center plays a crucial role as it imparts the information related to the company to the people. The contact centers track the customers’ contact in order to gather the data. According to Creaghan Harry, the contact center that is an extended part of the call center is aimed at maintaining the relationship with customers. The contact centers play a pivotal role in order to run a smooth interaction with potential customers.
Coming to the technological part of the call centers, a call center must have software that recognizes speech. The speech recognition provides support to the customers. The software also does work like text mining and process the natural language.
All these are to manage the customers. Of late the call centers use cloud computing technology. Through cloud computing technology, the call centers perform effective call handling.
Usage of Call Centers
The call centers that handle outbound calls are essential for the healthcare sectors. The outbound call center helps in maintaining communication with patients. Apart from the communication the call centers help in billing and collection of money from the patients.
The inbound call centers, on the other hand, are used by the large hospitals to provide healthcare facilities. There is a significant usage found in the hospitality sector. Exotic hotels use the call center for reservations. Call centers are functional 24 hours to maintain a liaison with the customers.
In conclusion, it is evident from the above information that the call center is essential to run a business. It helps in holding a potential customer base. Call center not only serve the customers but a large healthcare sector is now dependent on the call centers as it made the exchange of information easy.