Saturday, June 29, 2013
CALL CENTER
1.
INTRODUCTION
Call
center has tremendous impact on business. Call centers for selling goods and
services, as well as call centers for providing customer care, is going to
become a familiar part of the business of virtually every person.
Call
centers also pioneered the developed of self-service via the telephone, using
interactive voice response technology. It is providing a richer and friendlier
environment for self-service transactions than the tone telephone.
2.
OVER VIEW
A Call center is an area where several customer service representative
(CSR) agents are located to man a bank of telephones and computer terminals.
These agents are specially trained on telephone etiquette, the type of customer
queries, that may arise and on how to respond to these queries in a quick and
efficient manner.
A Call center can also
equipped with an automatic call handling system like an Interactive Voice
Response system (IVR) so that all routine, repetitive queries can be answered
by the system with out the customer having to speak to a CSR agent.
3.
TECHNOLOGIES
The
following are the various technologies that companies can deploy to web-enable
their call center operations in order to service their On-line customers.
. Contact
Information
. Call Back
.
Live Web Chat
.
Voice Over IP (VOIP)
3.1 Contact information:
On most web sites
there is a ‘Contact Us Page’, which usually consists of e-mail address and
phone numbers for a company. Customers can access this information and either
sends e-mail to the company or call they’re traditional call center using the
numbers provided on the site. Electronic mail
messages can be tracked and answered using specific e-mail handling
software.
3.2 Call Back:
In a Call Back
request, a customer fills out an On-line form on a web site in order to request
a return phone call. The form information is converted to a message and is sent
to the Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) of the Call center. This message is
then placed in a queue and a call back is triggered when the next agent is
available, or at a time specified by the user when the call request was
entered. However, call back requests are not very different from disconnecting
from the dialing a phone number found on a web page.
3.3 Live Web Chat:
Live Web Chat is based on IP technology. This technology allows a
customer on a web site to click on the live help button and be connected to an
agent at a call center who can answer a customer query by sending text messages
to the customer. Such systems allow calls to originate only from the Internet,
and offer keyboard chat as the sole communication method.
3.4 Voice
Over IP:
In
IP-centric technology option, the call center agent can work with one appliance
instead of two. The Multimedia PC provides both information and communication,
eliminating the need for a separate telephone. There are three common
approaches to VOIP based call centers.
. PC to PC:
In this approach
both the customer and agent have multimedia PCs and then the customer clicks on
a button on a website and is connected to an agent using VOIP .The agent can
speak with the customer and answer all the customer’s queries.
. PC to Phone:
When a customer
visits a website and clicks on the chat button, the call is routed over the
Internet using VOIP and is then passed onto the PSTN network and is routed on
to an agent in traditional call center, who can talk with a customer using a
telephone. The customer has to have a multimedia PC to be able to interact with
the agent.
. Phone to PC:
In this approach
a customer can dial a call center number and then the call passes over a PSTN
network and is then converted to IP and is then converted to IP and routed over
the Internet to the appropriate agent who can answer a customer’s query. In
this approach the agent in a call center has to have a multimedia PC to be able
to interact with the customer.
4.
FUNCTIONALITY:
The advantage of establishing a call center with Computer Telephony
Integration (CTI) is that there is a coordinated transfer of customer
information and the telephone call to a CSR .CTI is the most exciting
development in the field of computers and communication. This technology
marries the flexibility and ubiquitous nature of the telephone with the power
of the computer to open up a whole new vista in voice and data communication.
This means that the IVR (interactive voice response) System would
understand that a particular customer has requested a live agent assistance and
hence would transfer the call to a free CSR agent as also initiate a “Screen
pop” of customer information on to the CSR agents terminal. This feature
ensures that the agent knows whose call is going to come in next even before
the phone rings. This agent can then answer the call in a personalized manner
and complete the communication.
Deliver Channels Based Classification:
The delivery channels refer to the kind of channels through which the
customer can interact with the call centers, namely
. Voice
. E-mail
. Web Chats
. WAP
. All of the above or combinations of the above
Feature Based Call Centers:
The features of the Call Center depend on the components, which have
gone into the Call Centers. This basically talks about implementation of the
following;
. CRMs
. Work force
management solutions
. Workflow management
solutions
. Computer
telephony integration
. E-mail
interaction management software etc.
Location Based Classification:
The Call Centers are classified also on the basis of the location of the
target customer. In a captive Call
Center, there are chances like the organization running a decentralized Call
Center where in the Call Center is mostly located in the same location of the
customer. But in the case of the centralized Call Centers, the Call Center will
be located in a central location and it will serve the customers irrespective
of the location of the customer.
In case of Out Sourced Call Center, the Call Center is most cases is
situated in a central location and can cater to
. The
clients in the same location
. The
client in some other cities
. The clients in
another country
2.
SETTING UP OF CALL CENTER
The main elements involved in setting up a Call Center are
.
Telecom links
. Call Center
infrastructure
.
Call Center solutions
. CRM
software
The Telecom network is used to connect the caller to the Call Center
agent.
A call originates in the US PSTN, is routed over the network to the
USLDC, which then puts the call through on the IPLC to the Indian LDC. The
modem is used to convert the analog voice signals to digital signals and
Vice versa. The local loop is used to carry the call from the
Indian LDC
(I.e. VSNL) to the Call Center .At the Call Center, the
Router splits the telephone link and feeds it to Call Center server, and sends
the data to the Ethernet switch on the LAN.
The IPLC link the options are
satellite or cable more than two satellites hops voice quality. If the Call
Center is with in the coast, Optical Fiber is able, is better. Since through
satellite causes poor voice quality.
Call
Center location should be
1.
Local and long distance carries
support and availability of current technologies.
2.
Possible use of existing equipment.
3.
Potential for redundancy in
network.
4.
Current telecommunications
infrastructure.
5.
Distance from corporate computing
systems.
1.
COMPONENTS OF CALL CENTERS
EPABX
Computer
telephony integration (CTI)
CTI is used to
retrieve information about a caller or the purpose of the call and to forward
that information automatically to provide much more personalized service to the
caller.
Here the “systems” gathers the customer
identifier either by a service called Automatic Number Identification
(ANI)
that delivers the callers number to the Call Center with the customer
responses to the IVR prompts or by the switch itself and then in the
proactively pops the customer information on to the agent’s desktop as the call
arrives at the agents phone.
Integrated
Voice Response
. Callers to access
information after the Call Center are closer for the day.
. Callers to choose how to
conduct business either using the IVR or by talking with an agent.
.
Callers to have an option to exit from a long wait queue, allowing them
to conduct business on the IVR or leave a message so that an agent can call
back later, during a slow period.
. Agents to transfer callers
at the end of a transaction to perform routine perhaps private account inquire,
or to conduct post-call customer satisfaction surveys.
Other Major Components:
1.
Customer relationship management
software
2.
Work force management software
3.
E-mail interaction management software
Integration with the following;
. Customer Database
. Billing hosts
. Product Databases
. E-mail servers
. Chat servers
. Web servers
Key Components:
A full functional Call
Center should have the entire key components listed below:
. ACD (Automatic
call Distributor)
. Predictive
Dialer
. CTI (Computer
Telephony integration)
. Web
Integration
. IVR / FOD (Fax
On Demand)
. Voice logging and
messaging
2.
MANAGING THE CALL CENTER
Managing the Call Center in the networked economy calls for the latest
technology to access up-to-date information enabling the company to establish,
build and mange customer services. The
most important challenge is to train
the agents to manage the customer relationships.
. Manpower
challenge
. The technology
. Predictive Dialing
. Computer
Telephony Integration (CTI)
. IVR
. Software
3.
ADVANTAGES
1.Flexibility in assigning the right resources.
2. Reduced
labor costs.
3.Availability
of expert resources.
4.
CHALLENGES IN CALL CENTER MARKET
1.
Maximum up-time
2.
Rapid application deployment
3.
Dial-in and remote connectivity
4.
Management and integration
5.
Mixed desktop platforms and
configurations
6.
Legacy desktops with new
applications
7.
Advent of distributed Call Center
11.
CONCLUSION
Call Center technology is
evolving at the moment. A lot of changes are taking place in the way in which
companies interact with their customers.
Eventually all Call Centers will
be able to handle Phone calls, Voice Over IP, Live Web Chats and e- mails to be
positioned as market leaders during the coming decade, business must provide
best in class customer service solutions.
Companies must continue to invert in technology to improve their
competitiveness and must look for opportunities to leverage the Internet to streamline
operations and must business practices more effective.
