Everything about Call Centers totally explained
A
call centre or
call center (see
spelling differences) is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by
telephone.A call centre is operated by a
company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for
telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of
letters,
faxes, and
e-mails at one location is known as a
contact centre.
A call centre is often 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).
Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
Mathematical theory
A call centre can be seen from an operational point of view as a queueing network. The simplest call centre, consisting of a single type of customers and statistically-identical servers, can be viewed as a single-queue.
Queueing theory is a branch of mathematics in which models of such queueing systems have been developed. These models, in turn, are used to support work force planning and management, for example by helping answer the following common staffing-question: given a service-level, as determined by management, what is the least number of telephone agents that's required to achieve it. (Prevalent examples of service levels are: at least 80% of the callers are answered within 20 seconds; or, no more than 3% of the customers hang-up due to impatience, before being served.)
Queueing models also provide qualitative insight, for example identifying the circumstances under which economies of scale prevail, namely that a single large call centre is more effective at answering calls than several (distributed) smaller ones; or that
cross-selling is beneficial; or that a call centre should be quality-driven or efficiency-driven or, most likely, both
Quality and
Efficiency
Driven (abbreviated to QED). Recently, queueing models have also been used for planning and operating
skills-based-routing of calls within a call centre, which entails the analysis of systems with multi-type customers and multi-skilled agents.
Call centre operations have been supported by mathematical models beyond queueing, with
operations research, which considers a wide range of
optimisation problems, being very relevant. For example, for forecasting of calls, for determining shift-structures, and even for analysing customers' impatience while waiting to be served by an agent.
Administration of call centres
The centralisation of call management aims to improve a company's operations and reduce costs, while providing a standardised, streamlined, uniform service for consumers. To accommodate large customer bases, large warehouses are often converted to office space to host all call centre operations under one roof.
Call centre staff can be monitored for
quality control, level of proficiency, and customer service by computer technology that manages, measures and monitors the performance and activities of the workers. Typical contact centre operations focus on the discipline areas of
workforce management, queue management, quality monitoring, and reporting. Reporting in a call centre can be further broken down into real time reporting and historical reporting. The types of information collected for a group of call centre agents can include: agents logged in, agents ready to take calls, agents available to take calls, agents in wrap up mode, average call duration, average call duration including wrap-up time, longest duration agent available, longest duration call in queue, number of calls in queue, number of calls offered, number of calls abandoned, average speed to answer, average speed to abandoned and service level, calculated by the percentage of calls answered in under a certain time period.
Many Call centres use
workforce management software, which is software that uses historical information coupled with projected need to generate automated schedules to meet anticipated staffing level needs.
Technology
Call centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage large volumes of work. These technologies facilitate queueing and processing of calls, maintaining consistent work flow for agents and creating other business cost savings.
These include ;
Patents
There are a large number of
patents covering various aspects of call centre operation, automation, and technology. One of the early inventors in this field,
Ronald A. Katz, personally holds over 50 patents covering inventions related to toll free numbers, automated attendant, automated call distribution, voice response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition..
Call centre dynamics
outbound and
inbound. Inbound calls are calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. These calls are substantially different from outbound calls, where agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual.
(See telemarketing)
Call centre staff are often organized into a multi-tier support system for a more efficient handling of calls. The first tier in such a model consists of operators, who direct inquiries to the appropriate department and provide general directory information. If a caller requires more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier, where most issues can be resolved. In some cases, there may be three or more tiers of support staff. If a caller requires more assistance, the caller is forwarded to the third tier of support; typically the third tier of support is formed by product engineers/developers or highly skilled technical support staff of the product.
Call centres have their critics. Some critics argue that the work atmosphere in such an environment is de-humanising. 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. Furthermore, call centres have been the subject of complaints by callers who find the staff often don't have enough skill or authority to resolve problems, while the dehumanised workers very often exhibit an attitude of apathy to even the most abusive customer.
Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the close monitoring of staff activities is easy and widespread. This can be argued to be beneficial, to enable the company to better plan the workload and time of its employees. Some people have argued that such close monitoring breaches human rights to privacy. Yet another argument is that close monitoring and measurement by quantitative metrics can be counter-productive in that it can lead to poor customer service and a poor image of the company.
Varieties of call centres
Some variations of call centre models are listed below:
Remote Agents – An alternative to housing all agents in a central facility is to use remote agents. These agents work from home and use internet technologies to connect.
Temporary Agents – Temporary agents who are called upon if demand increases more rapidly than planned.
Virtual Call centres – Virtual Call centres are created using many smaller centres in different locations and connecting them to one another. There are two methods used to route traffic around call centres: pre-delivery and post-delivery. Pre-delivery involves using an external switch to route the calls to the appropriate centre and post-delivery enables call centres to route a call they've received to another call centre.
Contact centres – Deal with more media than telephony alone including Email, Web Callback and internet Chat.
Criticism of call centres
Criticisms of call centres generally follow a number of common themes:
From Callers:
operators working from a script.
non-expert operators (call screening).
incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers' requests effectively.
overseas location, with language and accent problems.
automated queuing systems. This sometimes results in excessively long hold times
complaints that departments of companies don't engage in communication with one another.
deceit over location of call centre (such as allocating overseas workers false English names)
From Staff:
close scrutiny by management (for example frequent random call monitoring).
low compensation (pay and bonuses).
restrictive working practices (some operators are required to follow a pre-written script).
high stress: a common problem associated with front-end jobs where employees deal directly with customers.
repetitive job task.
poor working conditions (for example poor facilities, poor maintenance and cleaning, cramped working conditions, management interference, lack of privacy and noisy).
impaired vision and hearing problems
The net-net of these concerns is that call centers as a business process exhibit stratospheric levels of variability. The experience a customer gets and the results a company achieves on a given call are almost totally dependent on the quality of the agent answering that call. Call Centers are beginning to address this by using technology to standardize the process all agents use.
Unionization of call centres in North America
Unions in North America, including the United Steelworkers, have made some effort to gain members from this sector.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Call Centers'.
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