Essay on Call Centres: Dynamics, Varieties and Criticisms

After reading this essay you will learn about:- 1. Introduction to Call Centres 2. Patents for Call Centre 3. Dynamics 4. Varieties 5. Primary Functions 6. Criticisms and Performance.

Introduction to Call Centres:

Call center 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.

A typical call center telephone. Note: no handset, phone is for headset use only.

Premise-based Call Centre Technology:

Historically, call centers have been built on PBX equipment that is owned and hosted by the call center operator. The PBX might provide functions such as Automatic Call Distribution, Interactive Voice Response, and skills-based routing. The call center 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(dot)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).

Patents for Call Centre:

There are many 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 40 patents covering inventions related to charge-free numbers, automated attendant, automated call distribution, voice response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition.

Dynamics of Call Centre:

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.

Inbound Call Center:

Services, which are inbound in nature, like providing customer/client services or technical support functions, are handled by Inbound Call Centers.

Typically, they provide the following services:

a. Customer support services

b. Information support

c. Invoicing support services

d. Delivery information and status support

e. Customer support solutions

f. Business Feedback

g. Customer Opinion

h. Product Survey

i. Chat support: Web Call Back, Web Push

j. Deal closing support

k. Delivery information support

l. Invoicing and order filling solutions

m. Research and survey support

n. Event management support

o. Collections support

p. Competitor update

Outbound Call Center:

Outbound Call Centers provide services, which outbound in nature, like providing telemarketing appointment filling services.

The following is some of outbound call center services:

a. Telemarketing

b. Appointment fixing

c. Deal closing support

d. Dynamic order filling services

e. Customer satisfaction surveys

f. Payment reminder

g. Debt Collection

h. Credit card verification solutions

i. Outsourcing program notice

j. Advertising and brand management solutions

k. Follow-up calls and mailers

l. Business correspondence assistance

m. Registration and confirmation functions to a call center

Combination – Inbound and Outbound Call Center Services:

Combining outbound and inbound telephonic, email and web support services and using wonderful technology tools, there are extraordinary solutions that call centers come up with.

Typical Department where Call Center Services can be outsourced:

a. Marketing

b. Sales

c. Customers Relations

d. Collections

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.

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.

Varieties of Call Centre:

Some variations of call centre models are listed below:

i. Contact centre:

Supports interaction with customers over a variety of media, including but not necessarily limited to telephony, e-mail and internet chat.

ii. Inbound call centre:

Exclusively or predominantly handles inbound calls (calls initiated by the customer).

iii Outbound call centre:

One in which call centre agents make outbound calls to customers or sales leads.

iv. Blended call centre:

Combining automatic call distribution for incoming calls with predictive dialing 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.

Primary Functions of Call Centers:

The primary functions of a call center can be classified into one of six categories:

1. Customer Service:

The function of a customer service center is to provide assistance regarding a company’s or organization’s products or services.

2. Telesales:

The function of a sales center is primarily to generate revenue through the sale of the company’s goods and services through inbound calls, outbound calls or both.

3. Technical Support:

The function of these centers is to provide assistance in using a customer’s products.

4. Dispatch:

The function of a dispatch center is to take an inbound call and in turn engage a resource to address the problem or customer need.

5. Collections:

The function of these centers to contact customers with the primary purpose of collecting money or funds.

6. Research:

The function of a research center is not to sell or support a product but to conduct research for the company or outside organization

Criticism and Performance of Call Center:

Criticisms of call centres generally follow a number of common themes, from both callers and call centre staff.

From callers, common criticisms include:

a. Operators working from a script

b. Non-expert operators (call screening)

c. Incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers’ requests effectively

d. Overseas location, with language and accent problems

e. Touch tone menu systems and automated queuing systems

f. Excessive waiting times to be connected to an operator

g. Complaints that departments of companies do not engage in communication with one another

h. Deceit over location of call centre (such as allocating overseas workers false English names)

i. Requiring the caller to repeat the same information multiple times

Common criticisms from staff include:

a. Close scrutiny by management (e.g. frequent random call monitoring)

b. Low compensation (pay and bonuses)

c. Restrictive working practices (some operators are required to follow a pre-written script)

d. High stress: a common problem associated with front-end jobs where employees deal di­rectly with customers

e. Repetitive job task

f. Poor working conditions (e.g. poor facilities, poor maintenance and cleaning, cramped work­ing conditions, management interference, lack of privacy and noisy)

g. Impaired vision and hearing problems

h. Rude and abusive customers

The net-net of these concerns is that call centres as a business process exhibit 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 centres are beginning to address this by using Agent-assisted Automation to standardize the process all agents use Anton and Phelps have provided a detailed HOWTO to conduct the performance evaluation of the business, whereas others are using various scientific technologies to do the jobs. However more popular alternatives are using personality and skill based approaches.