call center noted

8/10/2019 Call Center Noted

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In-house call center - A company which owns certain products/services sets up its own

call center to provide a helpline to its customers. Such a call center is termed as in-house

call center.

Outsourced call center - If a company hires a call center to service its customers, and then

the call center is called as outsourced call center.

Technological aspects of call center -

Headsets- Headsets are the key ingredients of a call center. They provide hand free

operation for the agents letting them type faster, talk on the phone longer.

ACD (automatic call distributor) - It is linked to everything that goes in the call center. Its

basic function is to take incoming calls and take them to right desk, i.e. customers desk.

Basic ACD system process the received telephone calls on first come first serve basis.The system typically answers each call instantaneously and if needed hold in a queue till

it is directed to agent. Many ACD software like PACER handle multiple queues and

keep records of calls and depending on the user defined business rules, ACD routsdifferent callers on different paths. Moreover a call centers business rules may be

configured as ultimate goal should be to serve every caller quickly and efficiently to

meet customer service expectations.

Salient features of ACD -

1.Flexible in call distribution - The system allows you to customize the call handling to

meet current operating requirements.

2.Call configuration - ACD directs the call either to call queue holding calls to be handled

by specific person regardless of dialed number or a call lifter series of calls ordered on

the basis of dialed numbers. On directing a call to call lifter, call center manager

programs on how call is to be handled while it is waiting.

3.Agents- The serving team specifies the type of the call to be handled by the agent.

4.Heavy traffic handling - ACD is a control point for call centers and is capable of handling

calls at the rate and volume not only far beyond human capabilities bur also beyond any

other telecom switching system.

5.Best utilization of human resources - Using ACD assures that your human resources are

used more efficiently.

6.Call queuing facility - ACD provides special services to all customers making them feel

special. All calls that are in a queue are made available to respective agent if he is free

else the customer is kept waiting in a queue. While in queue, delay treatment is provided

to keep caller online.

7.Call origin display - Different types of calls each with its own call origin display can be

directed to the same queue.


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8.Call mapping - Incoming calls are resident to a call class and are mapped to a queue. By

creating a queue mapping definition, different teams can be assigned to service a queue

at various times through the day.

9.Interflow - An ACD helps to reroute the calls automatically to another call center if

traffic encounters some conditions. Using an ACD system, automatically routes thequeued calls to back up teams during heavy traffic periods.

10.Skilled routing - Skilled routing directs the caller to the agent with proper skills to meet

needs of caller.

Importance of ACD -

Power- Nothing has more raw call processing ability than a standalone ACD. It is bestsuited to todays requirements.

Technology- All factors mentioned above are to be considered.

Interactive Voice Response [IVR]

It is an automated system for collecting customers information. It is like any other computer

system that helps the caller to get the desired information by way of asking questions. Theinformation is either entered through telephone keypad or voice. The caller then gets some kind

of information back from computer system through digitized or pre-recorded voice. One can also

achieve the desired information through fax machine or website. Use of this technology helps thecall centers to tackle many typical queries which earlier required an agent to answer. Customers

can retrieve virtually any sort of information from account balances to telephone number or from

weather condition to booking a movie ticket.

Why to use IVRS?

There are five good reasons why call center should use IVRS [interactive voice response

systems] -1.System can have access to the callers background information and can route the

call if necessary to relevant destination. This improves customer service.

2.Accessing information through telephone lets anyone interact with the system

anywhere on the globe.

3.IVRS allows companies to provide real time information on demand 24 hours aday without human interaction.

4.IVRS reduces the length of queue. This reduces waiting time for response.

5.IVRS is cost effective because of number of questions it answers per unit time.


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Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) -

A call center has to deliver many types of interactions like fax, e-mail, web chat, voice

interaction etc. This cross media interconnection is implemented by using a technology called ascomputer telephony integration. It is a way of combining data and voice together through open

connection based system. This it is all about using computers to manage telephone calls. This

integration improves upon limitation of computer and telephone. Computer instantly receives fullinformation about the caller and telephone provides real time voice interaction.

Features of CTI-

1. Caller identification appears on screen form existing caller database and remains for entirecall session.

2. Called number identification is a special tool regarding number dialed by caller. It is

displayed with each incoming call.

3. Automated dialing of outgoing calls- Point and click any phone number present in computerdatabase and telephone will dial the call.

4. Predictive dialing and call blending- If same person handles both inbound and outbound

calls, it is called call blending.5.

Conferencing- it involves a three way communication.

6. Virtual call centers- In it, several groups of agents spread over geographic location are

treated together as single center for scheduling and call handling purposes.

7. Intelligent call routing8. Online reporting- Certain CTIs include a comprehensive online reporting system plus the

ability to customize reports.

Benefits of CTI-

1. Voice recognition is done either for authenticating or for message forwarding.

2. Manages voice or video conferences.

3. Collects and displays pending live calls/messages left by the caller.4.

Receives fax messages and routes them to appropriate fax machines.

5. Based on the call input, initiates smart agent application to provide help with callers request.

6. Call handling time is reduced by great amount. Hence overall operation is speeded up andthus CTI is also cost effective.

Web enabling the call center-

Web enabling the call center means interacting with the customer through web. Before web

enabling the call center one has to keep in mind the following facts -

a. Though it is a technology being implemented, the customer is of much importance i.e.

resolution is the central focus of the entire process. Even while problem resolution is thepurpose, the experience has to be pleasant to the customer which means that the customer

needs as much interactive control as possible over entire process.

b. The technology chosen should be such that it is most appropriate to business rules ofcompany.

c. Web enablement is time consuming , not just for functional and technicalimplementation, but as far as support from personnel and increased complexity of job is


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concerned, i.e. people working there should be aware of managing e-mails, how to

understand multiple channel information and use it and what appropriate response times

are. Thus not only good communication skill, but also documentation skill andknowledge about current happenings are required.

d.

One is advised to use existing tools as far as possible e.g. Siebel call center package.

e. Plan to give higher priority treatment or some other reward to self service web users.

Encouraging that behavior is important because two things have occurred with the use of

web-

User is normally not interacting with live agent.

Information captured is lot more effective and hence time consuming. So that more andmore customers can be solved by self service.

f.

One should not assume that it will take place of human being. It is just an alternative,which is valuable, useful but cannot be forced.

g. Try to implement software that will capture information well enough to constantly

improve your knowledge base.

h. Keep interfaces simple.

Now lets look at the technology behind a phone call that is made by a customer to the CIC

[customer interaction center].The customer makes a call to the service center for the first time. He gives the corporate

information ID, which is matched against a table that shows the customers company is a gold

service holder, thus providing the customer with the highest level of service offered by the

company which is running CIC. Then the individual gives name information and is assigned aunique configuration ID that is attached to the configuration ID of a company. Once that occurs,

it will be used for recording the call, as well as for logging and monitoring future calls.

The workflow is a very important part of the Siebel, PeopleSoft call center operation becauseit handles automatic routing that is critical for timely resolution of problems.

Automated intelligent call routing -

Intelligent inbound and outbound traffic direction is a central condition for effective CIC.Call routing gets difficult when e-mail, chat and web routing gets involved. Managing this means

using call-routing software that can handle increasing volumes, geographical dispersion of the

call center representatives (CCRs), multiple channels and workflow. Typically it would identify

who is calling and why, use the customer database to identify the history, and then find theappropriate party who is available at the time the caller calls.

The software should have grated IVR so that some of the processes can be routed to

automatic responses. It should have CTI to capture the information and use the databases

effectively. Its distribution should be multichannel, which means an open architecture. It shouldbe easily scalable, since call volume will vary widely between companies, times of day, year and

months.

It should be able to capture real time data on the customer and use it in conjunction with thehistorical data on the customer that exists in the customer data repository. It should be web-


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enabled so that web-based routing to the appropriate menus can occur and so that the information

given is easily captured and centrally stored. It should allow live collaboration on the web.

It should provide remote agent support so that branch offices and small office/small agentscan be utilized in the problem resolution. This means that the home agent and the branch offices

can access most of the functionality that is provided to the headquarter agent. The software

should have strong scripting capabilities and an open interface. This means the interface cancontrol IVR scripting that is governed by applied business rules. It should also integrateworkforce management tools with its call-routing capacity so that the CICs agent capacity and

scheduling forecasts can be integrated into the use of the call-routing functionality in micro

specific ways.

Logging and monitoring-

Logging and monitoring software provides the granularity needed to do precision

scheduling and improve performance management. Besides such obvious things as collecting

information that is based on caller IDs of some sort, there are several other features that goodlogging and monitoring software has

One company that specializes in the performance management domain is e-talk

Corporation. They provide some of the most comprehensive logging and monitoring tools in thebusiness and have four applications. The two those are apt for this usage are-

Recorder- Enables customer contact centers to record and evaluate customer interactions

simultaneously through telephone, email and web interaction. It even allows for live monitoring

and recording sessions. What makes this particularly powerful is a deep search engine that canprovide call selections based on any number of criteria. Recorder can be accessed from a

touchtone phone.

Advisor- A tool that measures agent or agent group performance. It imports productivity datafrom ACD of the company and other business systems and combines with the quality criteria of

the company to give it a complete picture of agents performance. This is a web-based evaluation

tool.

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