Technology has brought lot of changes in our lives, and most of them are positive.
For example in the contact center space, advancements in technology have helped in bringing VoIP to our desktops and ultimately laptops. You must be wondering “How technology is related to a call center?” and “How call center is different from a contact center?”
Now, a call center is just not limited to inbound & outbound calls, it has diversified into various other offerings like Multi Channel Support (voice, text chat, e-mail, SMS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and business applications. Hence, these new technologies enable the transition of call centers to contact centers.
A contact center promises bottom and top-line competitive advantage, driving organizations to take advantage of these innovations. Only few established service providers are able to compete in this new environment. The contact center architecture is restructured on the basis of technology innovation and multiple service offerings.
A Contact Center houses and implements myriad technologies; call routing engines, databases, dialers, phone systems, analytics and reporting tools – just to name a few. Usually, these tools are interconnected using various protocols that provide integration under the form of CTI (Computer/Telephone Integration). This integration has enabled contact centers to provide services of transactional nature, by merging customer databases into outbound dialing campaigns; enabling “screen pops” for agents handling incoming customer calls; capturing sales trends and close ratios for agents while mapping this to customer detail.
A multi-functional contact center is designed to offer advantages across key areas:
• Customer interactions
• Advanced routing
• Agent productivity
• Scalability
• Extensibility
• Protection of traditional methods
To remain competitive, organizations should migrate effectively from traditional call center to the advanced, multi channel contact center.