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In the increasingly developing world of information technology, effective communication between businesses and customers is more important than ever. One of the outstanding solutions to optimize this relationship is the call center, also known as Call Center. So what is a Call Center? Let’s explore with FPT.AI its advantages, classification and outstanding features in enhancing customer experience and promoting business development.
What is a Call Center?
A Call Center is a place that plays the role of a bridge between customers and company employees through telephone channels. This is the place that receives a large number of incoming calls (inbound) from customers needing support and makes outgoing calls (outbound) for consulting, sales or survey purposes.
Each call center is equipped with computers, management software and telecommunications equipment to handle multiple calls simultaneously. This system needs to ensure continuous operation, not to keep customers waiting for long, to avoid the situation where the phone is busy or there is no customer service staff. The Call Center can be operated internally or outsourced to a specialized unit.
In addition to the communication function, the Call Center also plays an important role in improving the customer experience in the digital age, with features such as call recording, quality monitoring, data analysis and creating reports to evaluate the performance of employees, thereby continuously improving service quality and optimizing the customer care process.
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The Importance of Call Center
A call center is where customers contact to raise questions and difficulties, with the expectation that the service provider will handle the problem quickly and effectively.
For businesses, the Call Center is the direct point of communication with customers. Through calls, businesses collect information about customers’ desires for products as well as feedback on service quality. This valuable data helps businesses make timely adjustments, improve business operations and optimize operating processes.
An effectively operating Call Center brings many benefits: boosting sales, building trust with customers, optimizing operating processes, and increasing competitive advantage over competitors in the industry.
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How does a Call Center work?
A customer service center operates according to the following 5 basic steps:
- Receiving calls: When a customer calls the Call Center’s phone number, the call will be routed by the automatic call distribution system (ACD) to the operator, ensuring that calls are distributed effectively among the staff.
- Determining requests: The operator listens and records questions and requests from customers. Requests may be related to account management, passwords, complaints about products or services. During this stage, the operator will collect additional information necessary to proceed with problem resolution.
- Problem resolution: Based on the information collected, the operator analyzes and provides appropriate solutions for each specific situation. If the problem is complex and cannot be handled immediately, they will notify the customer of the time needed to resolve it thoroughly.
- Recording information: During the call, agents take notes of important information such as the customer’s name, details of the query, and unresolved needs. This recording helps track the progress of the process and ensures that no important information is missed.
- Closing the call: After the query and request have been processed, the agent summarizes what has been done, provides specific instructions if necessary, and ensures the customer is satisfied before ending the conversation.
Each step in this process is designed to ensure a professional, efficient, and highly responsive customer service experience.
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Types of Call Centers
| Criteria | Inbound Call Center | Outbound Call Center |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Processes incoming calls from customers who need inquiries answered or consultation | Makes outgoing calls, proactively contacting customers |
| Communication Direction | Customer → Call Center | Call Center → Customer |
| Nature | Quick and efficient service | Conducted at random times, may cause inconvenience if customer is busy |
| Main Technology | IVR system for call classification and ACD for routing | Auto-dialer and IVR system for connections |
| Main Tasks | – Account management
– Technical support – Complaint handlin – Answering inquiries – Processing purchase requests – Scheduling |
– Sales
– Debt collectio – Customer surveys – Lead generation – Telemarketing – Customer retention – Fundraising – Appointment scheduling |
| Basic Process | – Customer calls in
– Call screening – IVR system automatically answers or routes call to appropriate agent via ACD system – Agent handles and supports |
– Agent or system makes call via IVR system
– Connects with customer – Presents purpose – Performs task (sales, survey, etc.) |
| Advantages | Provides quick and efficient service to customers, enhances customer experience (CX) | Optimizes work through auto-dialer, easily reaches target customers |
| Disadvantages | Depends on incoming call volume, may experience overload if not managed well | May inconvenience customers if called at inconvenient times |
Blended Call Center is a model that combines Inbound Call Center and Outbound Call Center, which can handle both incoming and outgoing calls, allowing employees to flexibly switch between receiving and making calls depending on the needs and strategies of the business.
Businesses using Blended Call Center can optimize human resources, balance workload and flexibly adjust according to actual needs. This model is especially suitable for organizations that need to be both responsive to customer requests and proactively approach the target market.
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Call Center Deployment Models
In addition to the three basic types (Inbound, Outbound and Blended), call centers are also classified based on organizational structure and geographic location as follows
- In-house Call Center: The enterprise directly owns and operates the entire call center, is responsible for recruiting, training employees and investing in technology infrastructure.
- Outsourced Call Center: The enterprise hires a third party to perform the work of receiving and making calls, helping to reduce operating costs by eliminating the burden of recruiting, training and investing in technology.
- Offshore Call Center: Hiring an organization in another country to operate the call center, saving on labor costs and providing 24/7 service, but may face challenges in terms of language, culture and product knowledge.
- Virtual Call Center: Agents are geographically dispersed, can work remotely based on cloud technology, are highly flexible and only need an internet connection to operate.
Call Center vs Contact Center
Call Center and Contact Center are two popular operator models used today, used to care for, advise, and support customers according to the business’s requirements.
So what is the biggest difference between Contact Center and Call Center? See the following table:
| Criteria | Call Center | Contact Center |
|---|---|---|
| Communication Channels | Only through telephone | Multi-channel: telephone, email, messages, live chat, social media |
| Queue Management | Only manages call center calls | Manages both calls and social media channels (OmniChannel) |
| Customer Data | Only collects information through incoming calls | Collects and compiles information from multiple channels (email, social media, messages) |
| Self-Service Capability | Resolved through IVR (requires customers to press numbers) | IVR, AI chatbot, FAQ pages, forums and online knowledge bases |
| Proactive and Predictive Service | Not possible | Can analyze customer behavior and proactively send information when they need it |
| Customer Routing | Call routing | Multi-channel routing (messages, email, calls) helps reduce problem resolution time |
| Staff Skills and Responsibilities | Verbal communication, empathy, patience and problem-solving ability | All Call Center skills, plus multitasking ability, written communication and social media etiquette |
| Technology and Applications | IVR, voice analysis software, workforce management systems | All call center technologies, plus email response management systems, multi-channel routing, advanced analytics |
| Customer Care Method | Only performed via telephone from call data | Broader, multi-channel customer care, easily aggregates information from different platforms |
| Approach Effectiveness | Limited because customers are cautious about calls from unknown numbers | More effective due to diverse channels that match customer preferences |
What are the outstanding benefits of Call Center?
Directly receive calls from customers on the computer system, almost
instantly resolve specific customer requests effectively.
- Control the quality of sales staff: Calls are stored in history, helping businesses easily monitor, evaluate and improve service quality.
- Easy internal connection: Call center connects departments, optimizes work processes, ensures customers are quickly connected to the right specialized department.
- Demonstrate professionalism: Timely support and automatic messaging feature create a positive impression, increasing customer satisfaction.
- Increase revenue for businesses: Although the investment cost is low, the efficiency brought about by professional customer consultation and support from Call Center is very high, contributing to promoting revenue growth.
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What are the outstanding features of a Call Center?
- ACD subsystem: Allows automatic distribution of calls to each agent, optimizing the connection process and improving work efficiency.
- IVR subsystem: This feature allows customers to interact through keyboard options, helping to automate the answering process and respond quickly to their requests.
- Voicemail subsystem: With superior features such as archiving, managing voicemail and recording calls, this subsystem meets the needs of leaders in special situations or when there are missed calls.
- Conference subsystem: Supports organizing conference calls with a large number of participants, this subsystem not only serves training purposes but also helps businesses organize regular meetings or annual conferences.
- MOH subsystem: This feature allows you to manage and change greetings, music on hold or hold calls, creating a professional feeling for customers while they wait to connect.
- SMSC subsystem: This feature connects and manages SMS messages, helping businesses capture information from both internal and external sources effectively.
- Calendar management subsystem: Helps to arrange work schedules and create or upload voice scripts for various situations, enhancing flexibility in the workflow.
- Reporting subsystem: Businesses can set up detailed reports, track sales status and collect information about potential customers.
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What are the prominent practical applications of Call Center?
Call Center has become an indispensable support tool in many business fields:
- Retail: Support and answer customer questions about products, services, return procedures, as well as order processing.
- Finance: Provide information about financial services, investment advice, support for issues related to bank accounts, credit cards and promotions.
- Health: Support patients with information about medical appointments, appointment booking, health insurance, drug information and services available at the hospital.
- Tourism and hotels: Support booking rooms, tours, consulting and guiding about destinations and regional specialties.
- Information technology: Provide technical support and answer questions related to technology.
In addition, Call Center is also widely applied in customer service, education, energy and insurance. With the development of modern technology such as AI and Deep Learning, call centers are constantly improving customer experience and increasing operational efficiency. In addition, chatbot technology and voice synthesis are predicted to contribute to optimizing the communication efficiency of Call Centers in the future.
Hopefully, you have a clear understanding of what a Call Center is, how to classify them and how they work after reading the above article of FPT.AI. If you are interested in FPT AI Engage, please contact us immediately.
With the ability to listen accurately and respond quickly with more than 100 natural machine voices, this virtual assistant can receive thousands of incoming calls, make hundreds of thousands of outgoing calls every day and operate 24/7. Easily integrated with call centers of industries such as banking, insurance, retail, etc., FPT AI Engage automates the entire customer care process, optimizes operating costs and brings outstanding business efficiency.
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