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The growth in call center technology

In the early days of customer service, call center technology was extremly simple. Customers used to dial advertised numbers and the call was answered by an agent using a telephone. As the stress on customer service increased over the years, companies could no longer handle the pressure using a simple telephone mechanism. They needed sophisticated technology to give quantitative as well as qualitative support to customers. The call center technology available today integrates telephony and computer system to provide a holistic customer support.

Most of the call center technology available today is based on integration of telephony and computer systems. Agents can send faxes to a number through their computer terminals, record conversations taking place on a hard drive and at the same time have real time conversation with a customer. As soon a customer places a call to a service firm he is directed to an IVR system (Interactive voice response). The system gives different options which can be selected using the dial pad of a telephone.

After a customer gives his preference for a service desired, his call is placed in a queue, waiting for an agent. There are numerous agents working at a time and the call center software keeps track in real time the status of all agents present. Whenever an agent becomes free, the call in queue is transferred to him. . The software is designed to help the agent give information to customer accurately and speedily.To complement it the call centers maintain a high bandwidth network system for fast information flow.

Companies also have to maintain an extensive database containing crucial information (such as banking info of customers) . The database has to be stored in servers safe from unauthorized access. Companies today also take the precaution of backing up database in geographically remote servers, so as to have a backup in case of natural disasters such as an earthquake. In case of outbound call centers predictive dialers are used to improve agent performance and reduce idle time. These dialers use complex algorithms and automatically place calls without any human intervention.

The call center technology is growing at a fast pace. The firm Datamonitor predicts the global market for component technologies such as ACD (Automatic call dialer), CTI (computer telephony integration), IVR, predictive dialers and call recording has huge potential. According to the firm North American market for call center technologies was $2.7 billion in 2002 and is expected to reach a staggering $3.2 billion by 2007!