A call center is a centralized office used for receiving and transmitting a large amount of enquires by telephone and handling the customer’s issues using a call center software. They make sure of inbound as well as outgoing calls. They help a business deal with the consumer-related aspects.
Call centers are famous and essential when it comes to businesses across the world. India is known for its business processing organizations or BPOs and calls center facilities. This is because of the large population of potential employees and their high levels of education. It can be understood as a department or an office. Where the incoming along with outgoing telephone calls from existing as well as new customers are handled and responded to by a curated team of advisors or agents. It is a procedure for the larger companies to have call centers for the purpose of:
- Offering customer support.
- Handling and clearing of queries.
- Engaging in telemarketing.
- Conducting market research.
- And more.
Each of these functions has developed greatly over the past years. Along with the center itself, even the application of the correct call center software has become important.
What is a call center software?
Modern companies and businesses are on a day-to-day basis facing various sources and numerous types of communication. Those types of communication can use to their advantage. A set of technology developed to help businesses harness the daily multiple communication channels is called a call center software. The software comes in various forms and functions that can include all or some of the following:
- Autodialer.
- Call center monitors.
- Call analytics and accounting solutions.
- Predictive dialing facilities.
- Interactive voice responses.
- Computer telephony integration.
- Automatic call distributor.
- And more.
The advancements in Voice over Internet Protocol (aka VoIP) along with hosted software have made big changes with the call center. Due to that here is a list to set up your own call center. You need a basic PC, an internet connection, a browser, and a telephone connection or a mobile phone for that.
With the right kind of software, you can in an easy manner set up your call center hub. With that hub, you can perform monitoring, record calls, speech, do text analytics, return calls through the web, as well as social media support. It will be your primary tool for help desk teams and customer support. Providing them the enrichment tools that can boost their work.
Types of software
There are different kinds of call center software. The two main categories, curated are cloud-based and on-premise solutions. The two deployment options can be better understood as:
- Cloud-based – They have become more popular in recent times and offer the benefit of outsourcing the software and maintenance costs. They are easily accessible as what is needed is a simple internet connection.
- On-premise solutions – these are more traditional and hardware-based. They require updates and have maintenance expenses every few years. They are typically at the location on the same site as the company, which makes them highly customizable.
How does it work?
There are specific things that call center software do and a particular way in which they function. The workings of the software will determine not only the level of the support you can provide. Like its service quality, but also the help that is provided to the customers. This can be base on a workflow diagram. After all, it is a fact that call center software is the primary and fundamental solution used by businesses.
Call center solution needs to administer calls, communication-related to inhouse product/support, and also clearing informational related queries.
Similarly, it is also used to make calls to target markets and audiences. This is for the sales and marketing of their products.
A typical call center workflow can be the following:
- First, the system makes the identity of the customer by checking the unique caller number through the database. In case it is a new customer, it generated a new id for the customer. Doing it based on the caller phone number.
- If the caller number is located in the database, it will load the customer data from the database and make it available for the use of the agent.
- Once the caller provides one of the optional types of answers to the automated response. The call is pushing into the call queue so that all the agents that map to that queue will get this notification. An available agent will be able to take this call from the queue.
- The agent can assist the customer during the call and engage with managers and/or other teams when needed.
- In the case that the issue does not resolve at that particular time, then the call center software allows the agent to keep the interactions with the customer by regular follow-up to keep the status and progress of the customer case on track and mark it as open, closed, resolved, or requiring a certain degree of follow-up, etc.
- Moving ahead, based on the customer’s response the agent responsible can indicate the status of the call and issue with the customer as open, closed, resolved, or requiring a certain degree of follow-up.
- In case of resolve or closed status, a survey automatically sends to the customer by the call center software.
Looking at the above steps a software-based call center can make a much easy life to the agent with steps to follow as a workflow process.
Call Center Software -Features and Info:
Like every software, so do call centers software have features. In the below list, we will try and talk about some of the features. This list contains the feature and some explaining about this feature. This feature list is not complete.
Call center software feature list:
Call controlling:
This feature is about controlling the call. Once the agent got a call he can do all kinds of stuff during this call. It can be something as simple as a click to answer the call. It can be the basic options like forwarding the call, pause the current call, and mute it. If needed it can give the agent the option to start a text chat with the user. The agent can get into a conference call with more related people when needed. Contacting by emails, and there are new tools that contain a feature for interaction over social media.
Automatic Call Distributors:
Here we are talking about sending the call to the most relevant agent, or group of agents. During that process, the call is still monitoring and important data is collected.
Call Queues:
In this feature, we are talking about the in, between. While the user or customer is waiting for the agent. You are familiar with this as the music you are hearing while waiting on calls. Like when the agent tells you he or she is checking for something and put you on hold.
Call Bargaining:
The specific feature, mostly for new agents. Is the option to transfer the call to the manager, with and without informing the current customer about it.
Interactive Voice Response:
IVR is a system that interacts with the caller. Using a voice menu that the client can answer by clicking on the required number.
Disposition Codes:
Option to tag and categorize a call. Enable the agent to add more related information on the call. Mostly can be selected by a drop-down menu. Menu option or tags can be as interested, not interested, transferred to another department, etc.
Predictive and Power Dialer:
Have 2 main purposes. To inform the client when the agent is available. Call automatic to the client and one he or she answer connect them with the agent.
Messages and Voicemails:
Allow clients to leave a message for their agent by voice (aka message box) or by email.
Reporting:
The feature of reporting takes down all kinds of metrics. Popular metrics can be the number of calls per day/ for a specific agent/ department etc. It also takes into account the waiting time, service level provided, duration of the call, etc.
Benefits of a call center software
Why make use of a call center software?
It is a well-known fact that software is a system that has been designed to deliver efficiency and productivity. This is along with maximizing the usage of the developed communication technology to engage and network with customers. Especially when it comes to the address of their issues. The overall objective is to enable the organization to provide the best customer support on time. Doing this while ensuring optimal customer experience.
The benefits of the application of the software are plenty in nature. One of the first is that they allow lower costs. The call center software eases the workload and decreases the costs of calls made in general. You can find software within your budget.
The need for remote teams:
The next is small remote teams. Unless your organization is large-sized BPO operation. You will only need a small team for the management process. The team can handle anything related to the software along with customer support requirements. This adds to the cost-saving.
Moreover, the software ensures and provides enhanced security. Call center software carries out basic and essential tasks. Tasks that are required to keep the center operational and running at all times. The software does the vital job of getting you a reliable source of security protocols, compliance, and the overall maintenance of the system.
E-commerce, marketing solutions, CRM and CEM:
It also promotes operational flexibility. It does a lot more than just handle calls and keeps inventory of the caller database as well. They are easy to use and do not take new agents also too long to adjust to. They also provide companies with the opportunity to sync the software with the already existing applications of the company. Integration that deals with e-commerce, marketing solutions as well as CRM and CEM. The software is highly accommodating all sorts of the organization’s needs. The software further acts as a productivity booster. They are packed with several intuitive features such as auto-dialing, tools for monitoring, time routing, call route systems, etc.
The last thing that calls center software do is improve customer relationships. They improve the client relationships that are shared by the company by ensuring the delivery of the best customer support. If you ask them, most of the companies think they deliver superior services. The question is what does the customers. Thus, choosing the right call center software is the best way to provide optimal, reliable along with prompt customer service. They follow the principle that customer is king and consider every minute detail.
In conclusion:
A call center software can give you and your team lots of benefits. It can be from tools that the team can use to understanding customer satisfaction from the support that they got. This can be done by the monitor and the report components of the tool.
Knowing all this can help you improve stuff in the support process and team knowledge. This can directly affect and rising the satisfaction of your customers. No meter what your customers are, they can be inhouse, home user, or others. Once you have the information you know where to push to get better results. This can be suite for small, medium, and big size of organizations.