Contact Centers and call centers are the phone rooms where customers call in to speak to service personnel about their specific issues. The difference between a call center and a contact center is that a call center typically handles only traditional inbound telephone calls, whereas a contact center is designed to handle a number of different incoming media.
Not limited to just telephone calls a contact center also receives email, text messages instant messaging and online communications from customers. With the influx of inquires divided into many varying formats contact centers must be equipped to handle the outbound information in the same format that it was received. In other words if a customer is requesting information via email than the anticipated response back to the customer would most likely be in an email.
The same is true for the other types of media customers utilize today. If a request is received in the form of an instant message it would make sense that the sender expects an instant message response back, and so forth with the medium the contact center initially receives from the customer, be it email, text or telephone call.
Because each customer has their own file within the contact centers database it is necessary to have customized software in place to run the database and track each conversation or transaction between the customer and the contact center. By racking each conversations origin the company can better control and anticipate the needs of the entire customer base.
Additionally, if a customer has an issue and sends out an email they may have other questions related to the original inquiry and decide to call in to the contact center and speak to a technical or customer support representative personally. Having the proper software in place to track the communications methodology allows each customer service representative to access an incoming customers file and review all the notations to the account regardless of how the communications take place.
Particularly important to large, multinational or international corporations that service tens of thousands of customers, contact centers and contact center software is currently in use throughout the telecommunications and broadcast communications industries. Customer support centers and technical support centers in a number of industries are making the switch over from traditional call centers to contact centers and are spending millions to upgrade their existing communications systems to incorporate all new and emerging forms of communication.
Author Resource:-
Syntellect is a leading provider of contact center software and a live contact center solution spanning the entire customer service spectrum. Art Gib is a freelance writer.
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