Call Centers Basics

Call Centers are specialized department or segment of the company that bridges the gap between the company and the customer / Consumer. It gets extensive amounts of requests or complaints via Telephone, Fax, Email. The person employed by the company receiving the request often called as CSR (Customer Services Representative) CSE (Customer Services Executive) or CSO (Customer Services Office) or in a nutshell often referred to as an operator. The CSR or whichever terminology you could use tries to handle the request in as professional way as possible.

Sometimes the traffic or the volume of requests and complaints or for information over the helpline or Customer Support line is so much that they have to create call centers inland (within the same country) and some offshore (in some other country) facilities as well.

The reason for outsourcing the customer supports varies it could be for the purpose of cost saving. The hourly wages per CSR in USA would be different as compared to the hourly wage in India or Pakistan. Sometimes the quality and personal attention which is the need is missing or their could be a number of reasons for outsourcing your customer support.

Call Centers are run by the parent company mainly for managing information, requests coming from the consumer side. As industry and product line of the company grows the need to open up new Call Centers Facilities also increase and so more Jobs in Call Centers are created for such CSR’s or CSE’s.

Call Centers Facilities also come in handy for Debt Collection, Developing Customer Relations, Customer Preference Surveys, Collection of data, Collection of feedback by the customer and the list of Call Center’s Operational Activities can go on and on.

Depending upon the size of the company Call Centers are used for the internal Service too. Internally the Call Centers provide the information to the employees regarding the Policies, Records, Database, Customer information etc.

Call Center can operate independently as well as part of a bigger setup where other departments would be integrated in its functioning as well. However, the call centers are the place which have to be most informed about the product and services any company offers. Agents who are doing a Job at Call Center most of the time are performing the work of an effective filter that are taking request or complaints of customer’s and forwarding it to relevant departments or sub-sections within the Call Center Facility.

For the sake of classification there are basically two major types of call centers an Inbound Call Center and an Outbound Call Center. The difference between the two is that the first one is where the calls are landing in the Facility for getting information, launching complaint or any other reason. Whereas the Outbound Call Center facility is the one who are making calls to the customer it could be used for Telemarketing, Surveys, Product awareness creation or getting feedback.

Based on the today’s fast growing industries and number of different options available to the customer for satisfaction of one particular need the Call Centers and let me add Professional Call Centers are the need of the hour. One professional handled customer will come back to the company for future purchase and will do free word of mouth marketing for the company as well and vice versa. Therefore special care must be taken for the training of the Call Center Representatives.

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Syed Muzaffar Aqleem Tirmizi is part of the operational management in leading cellular operator in Pakistan, specializing in providing training solutions for individuals, teams and organizations. He also specializes in training needs, analysis and mentoring.  For more information do  visit www.ma-tirmizi.com.

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