An Overview
Whether you are setting up a call center at home or anywhere, staffed with 5 or 50 people, the whole basic process is the same.
Let me start off by giving you an overview of a call center
A call center is set up to administer product support or information queries from costumers.
There are two types of call centers: Inbound or outbound.
Inbound calls are made to acquire information, report a technical issue to ask for help, or to update any information in relation to one’s account.
Outbound calls are made by agents to customers, usually for sales purposes and debt collections.
Voice is a term used for phone support. While non- voice refers to handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and email, both of which is in one location known as contact center.
A call center is operated in an open workspace with work stations that include: a computer for each agent, and a telephone or headset connected to a telecom switch. It can be operated independently or linked to a corporate computer network.
A contact center is the central point of any organization where valuable information are gathered and routed to appropriate people. It has become a part or company’s customer relationship management (CRM).
How does a call center work?
As a business owner, you start off by providing one contact number for your customers. That phone number is called UAN (Universal Access Number), which can be dialed to connect to a destination from almost anywhere, around the world.
When a customer dials that phone number, the call is redirected to any of the call center agents available to take in the call. This is done with a technology called ACDS (Automated Call Distribution System) that comes with a call center software to route those calls.
If no agent is available, then the call is put on queue.
As soon as an agent becomes available, the call is connected to her.
One look and you would find how easy it is to set up a call center. Just get an ISDN connection, hire call center agents and you’ll have a call center running in no time.
By the way, ISDN is an acronym for Integrated Services Digital Network which integrates speech and data at the same time. This phone system works for businesses where each customer has their personal information stored in the organization’s database.
There are Three Types of Access Interfaces to the ISDN
- Basic Rate Interface (BRI), which is normally used for small call centers as it provides two channels only: one for telephone call and one for data.
- Primary Rate Interface (PRI), which is best used by corporations as it is capable of providing up to 30 channels. PRI connection can receive 30 calls simultaneously over the same line.
- Another version of ISDN is Broadband ISDN, which uses broadband transmission that can transfer more data as compared to BRI and PRI.
Having discussed an overview of a how a call center works, let’s move on now with the 6 Steps in Setting Up a Call Center for Small Business
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