What is a Call Center?

A call center is an office where a company's inbound calls are received or

outbound calls are made. Call centers are increasingly popular in today's society,
where many companies have centralized customer service and support
functions. Call centers employ many staff in customer service, sales, and support
functions.

Call centers are often large offices staffed with representatives who either make
or receive phone calls. Depending on the size of the call center, a single office
could have anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of telephone staff.
Depending on the needs of the company, call centers can make either incoming
or outgoing calls

Some call centers focus on answering inbound calls, such as a bank that gives
out a toll-free number for customers needing assistance. In this example, call
center representatives can give account balances and take loan applications
over the phone. Other call centers focus on outbound calls, such as a survey
company, where representatives make outbound calls to ask people to answer
survey questions over the phone.

Call centers can provide a number of advantages to companies. By centralizing

telephone-based service and support in one location, companies can easily
adjust staffing to match call volume. Call centers can be located almost
anywhere, allowing companies to take advantage of time zones and cheaper
labor rates in different states and countries. They also centralize the technology
needs of companies, allowing major telecommunications setups to be installed in
a small handful of call centers instead of a number of smaller offices, making
upgrades and training easier.
Many call centers use a number of different technologies to help improve
performance and customer experience. Inbound call centers often use automatic
call distribution, in which incoming calls are assigned to representatives in the
order in which they are received. Other call centers utilize call monitoring, in
which customer calls are randomly monitored by quality assurance staff to
ensure that phone representatives meet customer needs. Call center technology
evolves constantly, helping call center staff assist customers more efficiently and
effectively

Call centre

A very large collections call centre in Lakeland, Florida.

A call centre or call center[1] 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, product
services, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective
handling of letters, faxes, live chat, 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 retailers, and customer
support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service
internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks, retail
financial support, and sales support.

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 calling, emailing, chatting online, visiting websites, faxing, and
even instant messaging.

Technology
An Indian call centre
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.[2]
Automatic lead selection or lead steering is also intended to improve efficiencies,
[3] 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[4] 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, centralized, call centre location, which increasingly allows people with
physical or other disabilities that prevent them from leaving the house, to work.[5]
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 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
Call centre floor during shift.

There is 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 40 patents covering inventions related to
charge-free numbers, automated attendant, automated call distribution, voice
response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition.[6]

A report on the performance of an outbound call centre agent.

Customizable reports to measure call results at call centre, campaign and agent
levels

Dynamics
Types of calls are often divided into 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). It is possible to combine inbound
and outbound campaigns.[7]
Call centre staff are often organised 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 of which argue that the work atmosphere in
such an environment is de-humanising.[8] Others point to the low rates of pay
and restrictive working practices of some employers.[9][10] There has been
much controversy over such things as restricting the amount of time that an
employee can spend in the toilet.[11] Furthermore, call centres have been the
subject of complaints by callers who find the staff often do not have enough skill
or authority to resolve problems,[12] while the dehumanised workers very often
exhibit an attitude of apathy to even the most abusive customer.[13]
Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the
close monitoring of staff activities is easy and widespread.[14] This can be
argued to be beneficial,[15] 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.[16]

Varieties
Some variations [17] 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.
Criticism and performance
Criticisms of call centres generally follow a number of common themes, from
both callers and call centre staff. From callers, common criticisms include:[18]

• Operators working from a script

• Non-expert operators (call screening)
• Incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers'
requests effectively[19]
• Overseas location, with language and accent problems
• Touch tone menu systems and automated queuing systems
• Excessive waiting times to be connected to an operator
• Complaints that departments of companies do not engage in
communication with one another
• Deceit over location of call centre (such as allocating overseas workers
false English names)
• Requiring the caller to repeat the same information multiple times

Common criticisms from staff include:[20]

• Close scrutiny by management (e.g. 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 (e.g. poor facilities, poor maintenance and
cleaning, cramped working conditions, management interference, lack of
privacy and noisy)
• Impaired vision and hearing problems
• 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.[21] Call centres are beginning to address this by using agent-
assisted voice solutions to standardise the process all agents use. [22] Anton and
Phelps have provided a detailed HOWTO to conduct the performance evaluation
of the business,[23] whereas others are using various scientific technologies to do
the jobs.[24][25][26] However more popular alternatives are using personality and skill
based approaches.[27][28] The various challenges encountered by call operators
are discussed by several authors.[29][30][31][32][33]

Outsourced Bureau Contact Centres

Outsourced bureau contact centres are a model of contact centre that provide
services on a "pay per use" model. The overheads of the contact centre are
shared by many clients thereby supporting a very cost effecive model especially
for low volumes of calls.

Bureau contact centres provide an opportunity for:

• Pilot schemes - perform test of concept for new models for

communications, sales or customer services before investing in staff and
infrastructure
• Flexible solutions for SME's - small or medium-size enterprises can benefit
from a flexible service that can evolve with the businss
• Best of breed systems/technology - clients can benefit from considerable
investment into communications technology, leveraging benefits without
having to invest in large cap-ex projects.

Unionisation
Unions in North America have made some effort to gain members from this
sector,[34] including the Communications Workers of America[35] and the United
Steelworkers. In Australia, the Call Centre Workers Union represents unionised
workers; their activities form part of the Australian labour movement. [36] In
Europe, Uni Global Union of Switzerland is involved in assisting unionisation in
this realm.[37]

Standardisation
Currently, there are no universally bracketable international standards, other than
ISO 9000 series, available for the industry to follow up. However, some of the
relevant standards are loosely published by ISO with the division of ICS
33.040.35.[38] Most of the standards under this division have not been reviewed
thoroughly, but there are some guidelines and standing operating procedures
available on the internet.[39]

Mathematical theory
Queuing theory is a branch of mathematics in which models of queuing systems
have been developed. A call centre can be seen as a queuing network.[40][41] The
models can be applied to answer queueing questions for call centres. The most
widespread queueing model used is the Erlang C Formula.

Call centre operations have been supported by mathematical models beyond

queueing, with operations research, which considers a wide range of optimisation
problems.