What is a call center

Call center is also referred to as 'Contact Center' in current days. The name had been changed due to the stigma attached to the word 'call center'. Until few years back, call center was referred to place where only the people with no skill go to work. All you needed was English speaking skill and the rest would be taught to you in training. Not anymore, contact centers has developed into a industry which now even contributes to the GDP of a many country especially countries like India and China. Besides creating jobs for million of people across the globe. Professional like MBA, Computer engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers are also opting for this profession. In fact it is said that every individual should work in a call center for at least 1 year of their life. This will teach you things that are never taught in school and universities. Things like handling people, how to talk and convince people, handling difficult situations, sympathizing with people, understanding people. These are all the qualities that are needed in our daily life, do you agree?

The first thing that comes to the mind when we talk about call center is a place where hundreds of people are seated in a room with telephones in their hand and chatting away with their customers. Well, it's true. But this is not the only thing that is done here. Let me explain. I would define call center as a place where customers interact with company representative. This can be in various ways i.e either the customer calls the company or the company calls the customer. The purpose may differ. Example, a company representative calls a customer to inform him that he has missed payment on his credit card bill. A customer may approach a call center to find out why the item ordered by him has not yet arrived.

The different ways in which a call center communicated with its customer are:-


1. Inbound call center (ACD)

This is a type of call center where the customer dials in to find out something. Example, John is a customer of xyz credit card company. He has not received the bill for the current month. He is calling in to find out the total amount he owes the company. The representative who pickup Johns call, informs him of his balance, apologizes for the delay in sending him his credit card bill and promises send the bill immediately. Here John is the customer who has called a toll free number of customer care and is transferred to the next available agent, who services his request. This type of call center is also referred to as ACD (Automatic call distribution). How does this works. When a customer dials the toll free number, the call is sent to telephony provider (AT&T, MCI, Reliance, TATA). The telephony provider sends the call to a equipment called 'ACD', which is situated in the companies premises. This is an intelligent device. The first thing this device does is plays an automated greeting message "Thank you for calling xyz company, your call is important to us, please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly". The equipment puts your call on hold (at this time you will hear music), now the equipment starts to look out for available agent. If there is an available agent, the call is send to him. If not, the call is placed in queue waiting for any agent to be available. This process is called 'Queuing'. While in the queue you may hear another message, which will sound something like this "your call is important to us, please do not hang-up, we will be with you as soon as possible". After the agent is completes the call, the call is hung-up either by the customer or the agent. This completes one cycle for single call and now the can make himself available to take the next call. On an average an agent take about 100 calls in a day.


2. Outbound call center (AOD)


This is a type of call center where the company dials its customer or a prospective customer. Example Company xyz has lauched a special promotion where its offering 50% discount on purchase of any of its electronic items for a limited day. The company would like to inform all its existing customers of this offer. The company has around 200,000 customers. The company has now given this job to its call center. The call center assign 100 agents for this job. The agent start dialing all the customers informing this of this great offer. After 1 week of dialing all the customers have been contacted and following is the result.


10% of the customers came to the showroom and purchased the product.
60% of the customer showed no interest in the offer.
10% of the customer did not pick up the phone.
10% of the customer numbers were bad numbers.
10% of the customer asked to put their number of the 'Do not call list' and not to call again.

 In this example you have seen that 20% of the customer got converted to a sale and that was what the company was targeting.

Typically there are 2 types of calling that is done here.


a) Sales calling  – Almost everyone in this world have been receiving calls from company where representatives try to convince you to buy their product.  These calls are made from sales call center. As I have shown in the example above, here the law of average is at work. If you dial 100 people, you will be able to speak to only 40, out of this 20 will be interested and only 10 people will actually buy you goods or services. And this is actually what the companies are targeting for. They are not expecting all the dials made to be converted to sale. Only small percentage converted over a large volume of people is also profitable to them. As you seen in the above case. 200,000 people were contacted and only 20,000 customers (20%) actually purchased the product. Now what do you think, was the company foolish or smart in making those calls? Of course they were smart and this has made them big money. They will continue to run such campaigns. So now when you get a sales call and you say 'no' for the offer, remember someone will say 'yes' however foolish the offers sounds. LAW of AVERAGE always works, weather you are selling mud or Mercedes.
b) Collections – It's not very uncommon to see that people do not make their payments in time. There may be many reasons for this. May be genuinely forgot, no money in bank to make payment, did not receive bill, out of town etc. Whatever be the reason, the fact is that the company has not received its money. This may be for a credit card, Home loan, Personal loan, car loan etc. This money needs to be recovered by the company, in order that their business functions smoothly. In this type of contact center, the company pulls out the list of all the customers who have defaulted on their payment and starts dialing them. The reason for default is noted and customer is asked to make the payment. Some companies would want that their customer would default on the payment, so that they can add penalties to the existing outstanding. This ultimately adds to the income of the company. So remember to pay your bills on time and avoid additional charges to your bill.




3. Email call center


These types of call center are both for receiving and sending emails. You would have seen email address of customer care or sale department published on websites, brochures, advertisements etc. A customer would send a email to this email address (example – info@xyz.com). This email is received by one of the agent in the email contact center. This agent reviews the information and replies back to the customer. Here the agent is not directly interacting with the customer and there is a delay in response, hence is not a preferred way of communication. The advantage is that here everything is in black and white and minute details like account number, customer ID, account balance etc can be communicated back and forth in an accurate way. The expected reply time you can expect in this communication mode is usually 2 working days.


4.  Chat call center

This type of call center is similar to a voice call center. The only difference is that in a voice call center, the communication is verbal over the phone, where as in a Chat call center the communication is in text. In both the cases the communication is instant. When you browse the internet, you would have notices that some websites have icons that says something like this "Chat now with our sale representative" When you click on this icon you are connected to a person on the other side that is chatting with you in text. This type of call centers are becoming more common as it gives the customer the flexibility to contact the company from with the website, without having to make a phone call.


5.  Self Service (IVR) call center


Interactive voice response is a service where in you are greeted and responded by an automated system (without human person). You may have noticed when you dial your bank, you are asked various options. For example for English press '1' for Spanish press '2'. After selecting the option the automated system ask you for your account Id and pass code. Once you have successfully got authenticated, it stats giving you information as requested by you, for example last 5 transaction details. The IVR will guide you through the various menu options, using the keypad on your phone. Now days, the automatic system can recognize voice and you can speak into your phone for selecting options instead of pushing buttons on the keypad. This technology is called TTS (text to speech) or voice recognition.


6.  Blend call center
As the name suggests, in these types of call centers the agents are expected to be doing multitasking. This means that a single agent will be doing more than one activity. Example – John is an agent and he takes both inbound and outbound calls. At the same time his is also expected to respond to customer emails as they come. Along with John other agents in his group are also expected to do the same task. John and his team are working in a call center in Blend mode.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ACD - Automatic Call Distribution

AOD - Automatic Outbound Dialing

ACS - Automatic Call Sequencer

ACW - After Call Work

AHT - Average Handling Time

ANI - Automatic Number Identification

ARS - Automatic Route Selection

ARU - Audio Response Unit

ASA - Average Speed of Answer

ASP -Application Service Provider

ASR - Automatic Speech Recognition

ATA - Average Time to Abandonment

ATB - All Trunks Busy

AWT - Average Work Time

BOC - Bell Operating Company

BRI - Basic Rate Interface

CBT - Computer Based training

CCR - Customer Controlled Routing

CCS - Centum Call Seconds

CED - Caller Entered Digits

CIM - Customer Interaction Management

CIO - Chief Information Officer

CIS - Customer Information System

CMS - Call Management System

CO - Central office

CPE - Customer Premises Equipment

CRM - Customer Relationship management

CSR - Customer Service Representative

CTD - Cumulative Trauma Disorder

CTI - Computer Telephony Integration

DDD - Direct Distance Dialing

DID - Direct Inward Dialing

DN - Dialed Number

DNIS - Dialed Number Identification Service

DSL - Digital Subscriber Line

DTMF - Dual Tome Multi frequency

ERMS - Email Response Management System

ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning

EWT - Expected Wait Time

FCC - Federal Communication Commission

FCR - First Call Resolution

FTE - Full Time Equivalent

FX - Foreign Exchange Line

GOS - Grade of Service

GUI - Graphical User Interface

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language

HTTP - Hyper Text Transport Protocol

ILEC - Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier

IM - Instant Messaging

IP - Internet Protocol

IRR - Internal Rate of Return

IS - Information Systems

ISDN - Integrated Service Digital Network

ISP - Internet Service Provider

IT - Information Technology

IVR - Interactive Voice Response

IWR - Interactive Web Response

IXC - Inter Exchange Carrier

KB - Knowledge Base

KPI - Key Performance Indicator

LAN - Local Area Network

LCD - Liquid Crystal Display

LEC - Local Exchange Carrier

LED - Light Emitting Diode

LWOP - Leave Without Pay

MAC - Moves, Adds and Changes

MIS - Management Information System

MTBF - Mean time Between Failure

NCC - Network Control Center

NIC - Network Interface Card

NPA - Numbering Plan Area

NPV - Net Present Value

OCR - Optical Character Recognition

OJT - On the Job Training

PABX - Private Automatic Branch Exchange

PBX - Private Branch Exchange

PC - Personal Computer

PCP - Post Call Processing

PDA - Personal Digital Assistance

PRI - Primary Rate Interface

PSN - Public Switched Network

PUC - Public Utility Commission

RAN - Recorded Announcement

RBOC - Regional Bell Operating Company

RFI - Request for Information

RFP - Request for Proposal

RFQ - Request for Quote

ROA -Return on Assets

ROI - Return on Investment

ROS - Return on Sales

RSF - Rostered Staff Factor

SBR - Skills Based Routing

SLA - Service Level Agreement

SS7 - Signaling System 7

TBT - Technology Based Training

TCPIP - Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol

TSF - Telephone Service Factor

TSR - Telephone Sales or Service Representative

TTS - Text to Speech

UCD - Uniform Call Distribution

URL - Uniform Resource Locator

VDT - Video Display Terminal

VOIP - Voice over Internet Protocol

VPN - Virtual Private Network

VRU - Voice Response Unit

VXML - Voice Extensible Markup Language

WAN - Wide Area Network

WAP - Wireless Application Protocol

WATS - Wide Area Telecommunication Service

WFMS - Workforce Management System

WWW - World Wide Web

XML - Extensible Markup Language

Banking

Call Center for a Bank is an very integral point of contact for a customer. With the advancement of banking industry, customer satisfaction is no longer a factor that helps banks get more customer or retain existing customer. There are many factors other than customer satisfaction that needs to be in place for customer to continue to do business with a bank. There is a wide choice of bank for a consumer. What is it that makes customer want to select a particular bank is a debate that is currently on in the Banking domain. Basically there are 2 factors that Banks concertrate on to increase their business.

1. How to retain existing customer ? - Statistics show that customer will not be loyal to a bank for ever. They will change their bank for reasons as mentioned below. How to retain the existing customer base at the same time adding new customer is a challenge banks need to keep dealing with.
2. How to get new customers ? - Getting new customer is equally important from retaining new customers. This is the only way balance can be achieved. It is very difficult to get new customer as there is a  wide choice of banks available today.

Ways for retaining & adding new customers.

1. Provide new offers and attractive schemes.
2. Provide personalised service to customers.
3. Penetrate deeper in the market both Rural and Urban.
4. Opening new branches.

Today customer satisfaction is also known as customer delight. Whatever may be the name, the fact is, customer expect this to be basic requirement to bank with a particular bank. Customers are now looking for not just customer satisfaction, but also for personalised touch. Gone are the days, where you would stand in the queue for depositing a cheque or withdrawing cash. Now automated service like an ATM can do this. Although the innovation of ATM has revolutionized the way you deposit or withdraw money, it has one negative impact. It has cause the banker to loose personalised touch with the customer.

Now banks are working on a concept called 'HNI' (High network individual) or 'RM' (Relationship manager).  Its intention is to pick and choose all the customers who are doing good business for the bank and providing them with personalised touch. So now a customer feels important because he has a name of an individual (RM) who will service his specific needs. He does not need to call an automated system (IVR) and get to a customer service representative who will help him. He can directly call his RM and get his issue resolved. An RM will also proactively call the customer to inform him of any issue with his account. This makes the customer feel important and wants to continue to stay with the bank.

Why do customers decide to discontinue doing business with Bank.

1. No personalised touch.
2. Calling into the call center is frustrating as the IVR (Interactive voice responses) is very confusing & time consuming.
3. No one was able to resolve his issue as there is no single point of ownership for him.
4. Very difficult to reach a call center Representative and have to wait for long time in queue.
5. Dispute on extra charges levied by bank.
6. Repeated interaction with bank, but NO resolution.

Call Center Jobs

Call center is a booming industry especially in countries like India, Philippines, China etc. Millions of people are being employed in this industries every year. Many individuals have made a career out of this profession. There are individuals who are earning big salaries even as a Agent. Its weird but a fresher joining a call center as a agent would probably make more money than a Fresher Engineer. Being an agent is not the only job in a call center. There are various job roles that you could aim for in a call center.


Agent - This is the most common job opportunity you could have in a call center. An agent is a person who man's the phone. Calls coming in to the call center are attended by this individual. He speaks to the customer and understands his need, he then provided the relevant information/service to the caller on the phone. Practically speaking you dont really needs any qualifications certificate for working in a call center as an agent. You probably need to be a graduate with a good communication skill (You will also be trained on soft skills, call handling etc).


Team Leader (TL) - A team leader is basically a supervisor for a group of agent. He is responsible for a set of agent. Typically there is 1 TL for 10 agents, but this number may vary depending on the type of call center. A Team leader is responsible to manage his set of agents and make sure that the agents in his team get all that is needed to perform optimally in the the calls they are taking. Team lead is also responsible to arrange for team meetings, pep talks, manage escallations of calls etc. A little bit of managerial experience will help in this role, but typically an agent is promoted to the role of a Team leave based on his experiance and tenure in the company.


Group Leader (GL) - A group leader manages a set of TL's. Typically 10 TL's would report to a GL. The group leader is responsible to provide guidance and assisstance to TL's so that they are able to achieve  the targets/company goals. Targets could mean Right party contact, Customer satisfaction percentage, Sales percentage, collection amount etc. Person having suffient experience as a TL may qualify for the post of a GL.


Quality Analyst (QA) - An QA is a person who is responsible to maintain quality of customer interaction. His job is to listen to call between agent and customer and analyse if the interaction was good, average or bad. Based on the analysis he would then coach the Agent and provide him review and guidance on how to improve. 


Call center manager (CCM)- This person is responsible for over all target achivement of the contact center. All the GL's report to Call center manager. This role would involve viewing daily, weekly, monthly, quaterly, half yearly, yearly performace of the call center with respect to the goals of the company. Call center manager would be responsible for a particular division/product of the company. Example one CCM is reponsible for the Credit card division of the compnay while antother CCM would be responsible for Mortgage loans.


Center Head - A Center Head is responsible for the over performace and management of call center as a whole. This would involve all the process/projects within the company call center. Example a finance company has many division like Credit card, Mortgage, Home Loan, Personal Loan. All of these fall in the perview of a Center Head.