Information
about careers
By Dinesh Kamath
Call Centre
Operator
Also
Known As
Telephone
Operator, Call Centre
Customer
Service Assistant
Call
Centre Worker
Call
Centre Assistant
Call
Centre Operators make and receive calls, either to existing customers or to new
potential customers.
Introduction
Call
centre operators work for large companies that have a high level of telephone
or e-mail enquiries. Job descriptions vary depending on the employer but
usually involve selling goods or services over the phone. Call centre operators
may also advise customers about company products, conduct market research or
deal with complaints.
Call Centre
A
call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of
receiving or transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. An inbound
call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or
information inquiries from consumers. Outbound call centers are operated for
telemarketing, solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt
collection and market research. In addition to a call centre, collective
handling of letter, fax, live chat, and e-mail at one location is known as a
contact centre.
A
call centre is operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre
agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone
set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations.
It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often
linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers
and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked
through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).
A
contact centre, also known as customer interaction centre is a central point of
any organization from which all customer contacts are managed. Through contact
centres, valuable information about company are routed to appropriate people,
contacts to be tracked and data to be gathered. It is generally a part of
company’s customer relationship management (CRM). Today, customers contact
companies by telephone, email, online chat, fax, and instant message.
Technology
Call
centre technology is subject to improvements and innovations. Some of these
technologies include speech recognition software to allow computers to handle
first level of customer support, text mining and natural language processing to
allow better customer handling, agent training by automatic mining of best
practices from past interactions, support automation and many other
technologies to improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction. Automatic
lead selection or lead steering is also intended to improve efficiencies, both
for inbound and outbound campaigns, whereby inbound calls are intended to
quickly land with the appropriate agent to handle the task, whilst minimizing
wait times and long lists of irrelevant options for people calling in, as well
as for outbound calls, where lead selection allows management to designate what
type of leads go to which agent based on factors including skill, socioeconomic
factors and past performance and percentage likelihood of closing a sale per
lead.
The
concept of the Universal Queue standardizes the processing of communications
across multiple technologies such as fax, phone, and email whilst the concept
of a Virtual queue provides callers with an alternative to waiting on hold when
no agents are available to handle inbound call demand.
Premise-based
Call Centre Technology Historically, call centres have been built on PBX
equipment that is owned and hosted by the call centre operator. The PBX might
provide functions such as Automatic Call Distribution, Interactive Voice
Response, and skills-based routing. The call centre operator would be
responsible for the maintenance of the equipment and necessary software
upgrades as released by the vendor.
Virtual Call Centre Technology
With
the advent of the Software as a service technology delivery model, the virtual
call centre has emerged. In a virtual call centre model, the call centres
operator does not own, operate or host the equipment that the call centre runs
on. Instead, they subscribe to a service for a monthly or annual fee with a
service provider that hosts the call centre telephony equipment in their own
data centre. Such a vendor may host many call centres on their equipment.
Agents connect to the vendor's equipment through traditional PSTN telephone
lines, or over Voice over IP. Calls to and from prospects or contacts originate
from or terminate at the vendor's data centre, rather than at the call centre
operator's premise. The vendor's telephony equipment then connects the calls to
the call centre operator's agents.
Virtual
Call Centre Technology allows people to work from home, instead of in a
traditional, centralised, call centre location, which increasingly allows people
with physical or other disabilities that prevent them from leaving the house,
to work.
Cloud Computing for Call Centres
Cloud
computing for call centres extends cloud computing to Software as a service, or
hosted, on-demand call centres by providing application programming interfaces
(APIs) on the call centre cloud computing platform that allow call centre
functionality to be integrated with cloud-based Customer relationship
management, such as Salesforce.com or Oracle CRM and leads management and other
applications.
The
APIs typically provide programmatic access to two key groups of features in the
call centre platform:
Computer
Telephony Integration (CTI) APIs provide developers with access to basic
telephony controls and sophisticated call handling on the call centre platform
from a separate application.
Configuration
APIs provide programmatic control of administrative functions of the call
centre platform which are typically accessed by a human administrator through a
Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Dynamics
Calls
may be inbound or outbound. Inbound calls are made by consumers, for example to
obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. In contrast,
outbound calls are made by agents to consumers, usually for sales purposes
(telemarketing). One can combine inbound and outbound campaigns.
Call
centre staff are often organised into a multi-tier support system for more
efficient handling of calls. The first tier consists of operators, who
initially answer calls and provide general information. If a caller requires
more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier (in the appropriate
department depending on the nature of the call). In some cases, there are three
or more tiers of support staff. Typically the third tier of support is formed
of product engineers/developers or highly skilled technical support staff for
the product.
Some
critics of call centres argue that the work atmosphere in such an environment
is dehumanising. Others point to the low rates of pay and restrictive working
practices of some employers. There has been much controversy over such things
as restricting the amount of time that an employee can spend in the toilet.
Call centres have also been the subject of complaints by callers who find the
staff often do not have enough skill or authority to resolve problems, while
the staff sometimes appear apathetic. Other research illustrates how call
center workers develop ways to counter or resist this environment by
integrating local cultural sensibilities or embracing a vision of a new life.
Telephone
calls are easily monitored, and the close monitoring of call centre staff is
widespread. This has the benefit of helping the company to plan the workload
and time of its employees. However it has also been argued that such close
monitoring breaches the human right to privacy. Most call centres provide
electronic reports that outline performance metrics, quarterly highlights and
other information about the calls made and received.
Varieties
Some
variations of call centre models are listed below:
Contact centre – Supports interaction with customers over a variety
of media, including but not necessarily limited to telephony, e-mail and
internet chat.
Inbound call centre - Exclusively or predominantly handles inbound calls
(calls initiated by the customer).
Outbound call centre - One in which call centre agents make outbound calls
to customers or sales leads.
Blended call centre - Combining automatic call distribution for incoming
calls with predictive dialling for outbound calls, it makes more efficient use
of agent time as each type of agent (inbound or outbound) can handle the
overflow of the other.
Telephone answering service - A more personalised version of the call centre,
where agents get to know more about their customers and their callers; and
therefore look after calls just as if based in their customers office.
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