What is a call centre?
A call centre is a facility that answers inbound calls, or places outbound calls. They can be known as contact centers or customer care centers as well. They tend to use sophisticated software to provide the customer or potential clients with a full range of services.
The calls are handled by people, telephones and computers. They are by telemarketing, telesales, or technical support staff. Often times, call statistics are calculated and displayed on displays on ticker boards or by using a computer program for the company that the representative can check as needed. There are some programs that allow the call center employees to check to see how many calls are in queue and in what departments.
Some call center employees also respond to inquiries that come in by fax, email or comment cards. Depending on the department the representative works in will determine what kind of communication the employee will have with the customers or potential clients.
Some call center representatives can work from home by telecommuting but the majority of call center representatives work in a location with fellow employees. They tend to multitask through multiple programs for each call so they can provide the best customer service for each call.
To make sure that each department gets the appropriate calls, call centers tend to use a system or a operator who routes each call to the correct department. If one department happens to be backlogged, other departments can take the calls to keep the queue and wait time down to an acceptable amount. In most call centers, because they do deal with the public, they have margins set by government agencies that tell the company how quickly each call should be answered. A lack of doing this can cause the company to be fined heavily.
The term call centre is ever changing as technology gets better with time but the core fundamentals of the a customer making a call, whether it be on the phone, email, website or fax, to a department will remain constant because the customer will always view the call as an important or pivotal activity to themselves. Whatever name you give it, the call center will always operate on near identical principals of meeting customer needs in real-time or near real-time, and that is what the most important thing in a call center is.
