How Do Call Centres Work: 3 Quick Facts

Call centres are a type of specialized office or department where they handle incoming and outgoing telephone and voice calls. They cane used for many things like sales and marketing functions and market research. You can have a call centre function located within a company or the service can be contracted out to an expert call centre facility. Call centres can be small operations with just a few staff or hundreds of people depending on their purpose and the client base the call centre is designed to serve.

We have all seen or more likely heard from call centres that are trying to sell us something through telemarketing. Or it could be someone calling us from the cable or telephone companies who want to check on their services and see if we would like an upgrade. More than likely if you call just about anywhere these days to ask a question you would almost certainly be redirected to a call centre, sometimes across the country and even in India or the Philippines. Big corporations use call centres to help customers with their account inquiries and to deal with credit card issues that might arise. And every political campaign these days uses a call centre to seek support and political donations.

1. Types of call centres

There are two basic types of contact centers that are defined by the nature of their work. The first is called captive and that means it takes calls for its parent company. The second is contracted out to a third party and takes the calls for a client company. Once both types were considered a cost to business, but in recent years that has shifted to being seen as a revenue source. That’s where the call centre takes calls about service issues and then tries to upsell the caller on new services after they’ve dealt with their issue. This is particularly true for banks and financial institutions who give their call centre staff a script that asks to see if calling customers want to take a new credit card, personal loan or raise their credit limits.

2. Two reasons to take their calls

Inbound calls to call centres are almost always either service or technically related. People want to buy a product or enquire about a service like their cable. Or they have a problem because they are not getting the service or product they ordered. Like that cable service they paid for. On the service side, most calls are actually about minor problems related to billing and account management. Usually their issues can be resolved in one phone call. For technical issues, the incoming calls to a call centre are usually about technology. Most pieces of new technology come with three things: a manual, an on-line guide, and a number to call for technical support. If people can’t fix their problem themselves with the first two tools, they call technical support. And they get the call centre.

3. What makes a good call centre?

There are three things that make a good call centre. They are good people, good processes, and great technology. The people, no surprise, may be the most important ingredient, since the business of a call centre is one person talking to another one. You also need good trainers, quality analysts, supervisors, applications developers, report analysts, and managers. The process will be fine as long as people follow it, like the script for various types of calls. That leaves the technology as the key to the puzzle of making a good call centre. Great technology can save time, store information and build relationships. That includes having a great CRM tool to manage the customer experience and relationship. Great technology helps good people follow a good process to create a great call centre experience for everyone.