Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Contact Center shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Contact Center offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Contact Center at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Contact Center? Wrong! If the Contact Center is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Contact Center then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Contact Center? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Contact Center and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Contact Center wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Contact Center then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Contact Center site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Contact Center, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Contact Center, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

A call centre or call center (see American and British English spelling differences#-re .2F -er) is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, facsimile, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.

A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for Customer representative, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/Headphones connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including Mainframe computer, microcomputers and local area network. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).

Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support. However, some companies employ staff to work in their call centres almost by "bulk", applicants requiring little or no educational qualifications or experience. In contrast, some firms demand lengthy customer service experience, various formal certificates and impose a complicated and staged recruitment interview procedure; an example of this is American Express.

Mathematical theory A call centre can be , from an operational point of view, as a queueing network. The simplest call centre, consisting of a single type of customers and statistically-identical servers, can be viewed as a single-queue. Queueing theory is a branch of mathematics in which models of such queueing systems have been developed. These models, in turn, are used to support work force planning and management, for example by helping answer the following common staffing-question: given a service-level, as determined by management, what is the least number of telephone agents that is required to achieve it. (Prevalent examples of service levels are: at least 80% of the callers are answered within 20 seconds; or, no more than 3% of the customers hang-up, due to their impatience, before being served.)

Queueing models also provide qualitative insight, for example identifying the circumstances under which economies of scale prevail, namely that a single large call centre is more effective at answering calls than several (distributed) smaller ones; or that cross-selling is beneficial; or that a call centre should be quality-driven or efficiency-driven or, most likely, both Quality and Efficiency Driven (abbreviated to QED). Recently, queueing models have also been used for planning and operating Skills based routing of calls within a call centre, which entails the analysis of systems with multi-type customers and multi-skilled agents.

Call centre operations have been supported by mathematical models beyond queueing, with operations research, which considers a wide range of Optimization (mathematics), being very relevant. For example, for forecasting of calls, for determining shift-structures, and even for analysing customers' impatience while waiting to be served by an agent.

Accommodation The centralisation of call management aims to improve a company's operations and reduce costs, while providing a standardised, streamlined, uniform service for consumers, making this approach ideal for large companies with extensive customer support needs. To accommodate for such a large customer base, large warehouses are often converted to office space to host all call centre operations under one roof.

Centralised offices mean that large numbers of workers can be managed and controlled by a relatively small number of managers and support staff. They are often supported by computer technology that manages, measures and monitors the performance and activities of the workers. Call centre staff are closely monitored for quality control, level of proficiency, and customer service. Typical contact centre operations focus on the discipline areas of workforce management, queue management, quality monitoring, and reporting. Reporting in a call centre can be further broken down into real time reporting and historical reporting. The types of information collected for a group of call centre agents typically include: agents logged in, agents ready to take calls, agents available to take calls, agents in wrap up mode, average call duration, average call duration including wrap-up time, longest duration agent available, longest duration call in queue, number of calls in queue, number of calls offered, number of calls abandoned, average speed to answer, average speed to abandoned and service level, calculated by the percentage of calls answered in under a certain time period.

Many Call Centres use workforce management software, which is software that uses historical information coupled with projected need to generate automated schedules. This aims to provide adequate staffing skilled enough to assist callers.

The relatively high cost of personnel and office space as well as need for large manpower and challenges around attrition, hiring and managing a large workforce influences outsourcing in the call centre industry.

Inadequate computer systems can mean staff take one or two seconds longer than necessary to process a transaction. This can often be quantified in staff cost terms. This is often used as a driving factor in any business case to justify a complete system upgrade or replacement. For several factors, including the efficiency of the call centres, the level of computer and telecom support that may be adequate for staff in a typical branch office may prove totally inadequate.

Technology Call Centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage the large volumes of work that need to be managed by the call centre. These technologies ensure that agents are kept as productive as possible, and that calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible, resulting in good levels of service.

These include ;



Patents There are a large number of patents covering various aspects of call centre technology. One of the early inventors in this field, Ronald A. Katz, personally holds over 50 seminal patents covering inventions related to toll free numbers, automated attendant, automated call distribution, voice response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition. Bednarek et al., "Katz Patent Reexamination: A Change in Momentum Favoring RAKTL Targets", ShawPittman, June 9, 2004. Mr. Katz has licensed his patents to over 100 companies including AT&T, IBM and Citibank, and has been characterised as a patent troll for his aggressive legal tactics.

Call centre dynamics Types of calls are often divided into outbound and inbound. Inbound calls are calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. These calls are substantially different from outbound calls, where agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual. (See telemarketing)

Call centre staff are often organised into a multi-tier support system for a more efficient handling of calls. The first tier in such a model consists of operators, who direct inquiries to the appropriate department and provide general directory information. If a caller requires more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier, where most issues can be resolved. In some cases, there may be three or more tiers of support staff. If a caller requires more assistance, the caller is forwarded to the third tier of support; typically the third tier of support is formed by product engineers/developers or highly skilled technical support staff of the product.

Call centres have their critics. Some critics argue that the work atmosphere in such an environment is de-humanising. Others point to the low rates of pay and restrictive working practices of some employers. There has been much controversy over such things as restricting the amount of time that an employee can spend in the toilet. Furthermore, call centres have been the subject of complaints by callers who find the staff often do not have enough skill or authority to resolve problems, while the dehumanised workers very often exhibit an attitude of apathy to even the most abusive customer.

Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the close monitoring of staff activities is easy and widespread. This can be argued to be beneficial, to enable the company to better plan the workload and time of its employees. Some people have argued that such close monitoring breaches human rights to privacy. Yet another argument is that close monitoring and measurement by quantitative metrics can be counter-productive in that it can lead to poor customer service and a poor image of the company.

Management of call centres Management of call centres involves balancing the requirements of cost effectiveness and service. Callers do not wish to wait in exorbitantly long teletraffic queuing theory until they can be helped and so management must provide sufficient staff and inbound capacity to ensure that the quality of service is maintained. However, staff costs generally form about 70% percent of the cost of running a call centre and so management must minimise the number of staff present.

To perform this balancing act, call centre managers make use of demand estimation, Telecommunication forecasting and dimensioning techniques to determine the level of staff required at any time. Managers must take into account staff tea and lunch breaks and must determine the number of agents required on duty at any one time.

Forecasting demand Call Volume Forecasting results are vital in making management decisions in call centres. Forecasting methods rely on data acquired from various sources including historical data, trend data and so on. Forecasting methods must predict the traffic intensity within the call centre in quarter-hour increments and these results must be converted to staffing rosters. Special attention must be paid to the busy hour. Forecasting methods must be used to pre-empt a situation where equipment needs to be upgraded as traffic intensity has exceeded the maximum capacity of the call centre.

Call centre performance There are many standard traffic measurement (telecommunications)s (performance metrics) that can be performed on a call centre to determine its network performance levels. However, the most important performance measures are:



These metrics give hard numbers on which to hang performance assessment. Quality Assurance can also be monitored by a quality assurance (QA) team, using call recording where the team manager listens to recorded calls and assesses performance of the agent, with coaching and training to help drive up performance.

Another way of measuring call centre performance is to use post-call IVR surveys to gain customer feedback. Customers are invited to take part in a short survey at the end of the call, where they can respond to pre-recorded questions by pressing the numbers on their telephone keypad or by speaking their comments.

Refinements of call centres There are many refinements to the generic call centre model. Each refinement helps increase the efficiency of the call centre thereby allowing management to make better decisions involving economy and service.

The following list contains some examples of call centre refinements:



Additional issues in call centres There are many other issues that have to be planned for when managing a call centre. A few of these issues are listed below:



Variations on the generic call centre model The various components in a call centre discussed in the previous sections are the generic form of a call centre. There are many variations on the model developed above. A few of the variations are listed below:

Criticism of call centres Criticisms of call centres generally follow a number of common themes:

From Callers:

From Staff:

Unionisation of call centres in North America Unions in North America, including the United Steelworkers, have made some effort to gain members from this sector.

References
  • Kennedy I., Call Centres, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003.
  • Masi D.M.B., Fischer M.J., Harris C.M., Numerical Analysis of Routing Rules for Call Centers, Telecommunications Review, 1998..
  • HSE Web site at www.hse.gov.uk/lau/lacs/94-1.htm for guidelines about call centre working practices.
  • Fluss, Donna, "The Real-Time Contact Center", 2005 AMACOM


    • de:Callcenteres:Centro de llamadasfr:Centre d'appelia:Centro de appellarit:Call centernl:Callcenterja:コールセンターpl:Call centerpt:Central de atendimentoru:Call-центрыsv:Callcenter

    A call centre or call center (see American and British English spelling differences#-re .2F -er) is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, facsimile, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.

    A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for Customer representative, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/Headphones connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including Mainframe computer, microcomputers and local area network. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).

    Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support. However, some companies employ staff to work in their call centres almost by "bulk", applicants requiring little or no educational qualifications or experience. In contrast, some firms demand lengthy customer service experience, various formal certificates and impose a complicated and staged recruitment interview procedure; an example of this is American Express.

    Mathematical theory A call centre can be , from an operational point of view, as a queueing network. The simplest call centre, consisting of a single type of customers and statistically-identical servers, can be viewed as a single-queue. Queueing theory is a branch of mathematics in which models of such queueing systems have been developed. These models, in turn, are used to support work force planning and management, for example by helping answer the following common staffing-question: given a service-level, as determined by management, what is the least number of telephone agents that is required to achieve it. (Prevalent examples of service levels are: at least 80% of the callers are answered within 20 seconds; or, no more than 3% of the customers hang-up, due to their impatience, before being served.)

    Queueing models also provide qualitative insight, for example identifying the circumstances under which economies of scale prevail, namely that a single large call centre is more effective at answering calls than several (distributed) smaller ones; or that cross-selling is beneficial; or that a call centre should be quality-driven or efficiency-driven or, most likely, both Quality and Efficiency Driven (abbreviated to QED). Recently, queueing models have also been used for planning and operating Skills based routing of calls within a call centre, which entails the analysis of systems with multi-type customers and multi-skilled agents.

    Call centre operations have been supported by mathematical models beyond queueing, with operations research, which considers a wide range of Optimization (mathematics), being very relevant. For example, for forecasting of calls, for determining shift-structures, and even for analysing customers' impatience while waiting to be served by an agent.

    Accommodation The centralisation of call management aims to improve a company's operations and reduce costs, while providing a standardised, streamlined, uniform service for consumers, making this approach ideal for large companies with extensive customer support needs. To accommodate for such a large customer base, large warehouses are often converted to office space to host all call centre operations under one roof.

    Centralised offices mean that large numbers of workers can be managed and controlled by a relatively small number of managers and support staff. They are often supported by computer technology that manages, measures and monitors the performance and activities of the workers. Call centre staff are closely monitored for quality control, level of proficiency, and customer service. Typical contact centre operations focus on the discipline areas of workforce management, queue management, quality monitoring, and reporting. Reporting in a call centre can be further broken down into real time reporting and historical reporting. The types of information collected for a group of call centre agents typically include: agents logged in, agents ready to take calls, agents available to take calls, agents in wrap up mode, average call duration, average call duration including wrap-up time, longest duration agent available, longest duration call in queue, number of calls in queue, number of calls offered, number of calls abandoned, average speed to answer, average speed to abandoned and service level, calculated by the percentage of calls answered in under a certain time period.

    Many Call Centres use workforce management software, which is software that uses historical information coupled with projected need to generate automated schedules. This aims to provide adequate staffing skilled enough to assist callers.

    The relatively high cost of personnel and office space as well as need for large manpower and challenges around attrition, hiring and managing a large workforce influences outsourcing in the call centre industry.

    Inadequate computer systems can mean staff take one or two seconds longer than necessary to process a transaction. This can often be quantified in staff cost terms. This is often used as a driving factor in any business case to justify a complete system upgrade or replacement. For several factors, including the efficiency of the call centres, the level of computer and telecom support that may be adequate for staff in a typical branch office may prove totally inadequate.

    Technology Call Centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage the large volumes of work that need to be managed by the call centre. These technologies ensure that agents are kept as productive as possible, and that calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible, resulting in good levels of service.

    These include ;



    Patents There are a large number of patents covering various aspects of call centre technology. One of the early inventors in this field, Ronald A. Katz, personally holds over 50 seminal patents covering inventions related to toll free numbers, automated attendant, automated call distribution, voice response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition. Bednarek et al., "Katz Patent Reexamination: A Change in Momentum Favoring RAKTL Targets", ShawPittman, June 9, 2004. Mr. Katz has licensed his patents to over 100 companies including AT&T, IBM and Citibank, and has been characterised as a patent troll for his aggressive legal tactics.

    Call centre dynamics Types of calls are often divided into outbound and inbound. Inbound calls are calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. These calls are substantially different from outbound calls, where agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual. (See telemarketing)

    Call centre staff are often organised into a multi-tier support system for a more efficient handling of calls. The first tier in such a model consists of operators, who direct inquiries to the appropriate department and provide general directory information. If a caller requires more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier, where most issues can be resolved. In some cases, there may be three or more tiers of support staff. If a caller requires more assistance, the caller is forwarded to the third tier of support; typically the third tier of support is formed by product engineers/developers or highly skilled technical support staff of the product.

    Call centres have their critics. Some critics argue that the work atmosphere in such an environment is de-humanising. Others point to the low rates of pay and restrictive working practices of some employers. There has been much controversy over such things as restricting the amount of time that an employee can spend in the toilet. Furthermore, call centres have been the subject of complaints by callers who find the staff often do not have enough skill or authority to resolve problems, while the dehumanised workers very often exhibit an attitude of apathy to even the most abusive customer.

    Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the close monitoring of staff activities is easy and widespread. This can be argued to be beneficial, to enable the company to better plan the workload and time of its employees. Some people have argued that such close monitoring breaches human rights to privacy. Yet another argument is that close monitoring and measurement by quantitative metrics can be counter-productive in that it can lead to poor customer service and a poor image of the company.

    Management of call centres Management of call centres involves balancing the requirements of cost effectiveness and service. Callers do not wish to wait in exorbitantly long teletraffic queuing theory until they can be helped and so management must provide sufficient staff and inbound capacity to ensure that the quality of service is maintained. However, staff costs generally form about 70% percent of the cost of running a call centre and so management must minimise the number of staff present.

    To perform this balancing act, call centre managers make use of demand estimation, Telecommunication forecasting and dimensioning techniques to determine the level of staff required at any time. Managers must take into account staff tea and lunch breaks and must determine the number of agents required on duty at any one time.

    Forecasting demand Call Volume Forecasting results are vital in making management decisions in call centres. Forecasting methods rely on data acquired from various sources including historical data, trend data and so on. Forecasting methods must predict the traffic intensity within the call centre in quarter-hour increments and these results must be converted to staffing rosters. Special attention must be paid to the busy hour. Forecasting methods must be used to pre-empt a situation where equipment needs to be upgraded as traffic intensity has exceeded the maximum capacity of the call centre.

    Call centre performance There are many standard traffic measurement (telecommunications)s (performance metrics) that can be performed on a call centre to determine its network performance levels. However, the most important performance measures are:



    These metrics give hard numbers on which to hang performance assessment. Quality Assurance can also be monitored by a quality assurance (QA) team, using call recording where the team manager listens to recorded calls and assesses performance of the agent, with coaching and training to help drive up performance.

    Another way of measuring call centre performance is to use post-call IVR surveys to gain customer feedback. Customers are invited to take part in a short survey at the end of the call, where they can respond to pre-recorded questions by pressing the numbers on their telephone keypad or by speaking their comments.

    Refinements of call centres There are many refinements to the generic call centre model. Each refinement helps increase the efficiency of the call centre thereby allowing management to make better decisions involving economy and service.

    The following list contains some examples of call centre refinements:



    Additional issues in call centres There are many other issues that have to be planned for when managing a call centre. A few of these issues are listed below:



    Variations on the generic call centre model The various components in a call centre discussed in the previous sections are the generic form of a call centre. There are many variations on the model developed above. A few of the variations are listed below:

    Criticism of call centres Criticisms of call centres generally follow a number of common themes:

    From Callers:

    From Staff:

    Unionisation of call centres in North America Unions in North America, including the United Steelworkers, have made some effort to gain members from this sector.

    References
  • Kennedy I., Call Centres, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003.
  • Masi D.M.B., Fischer M.J., Harris C.M., Numerical Analysis of Routing Rules for Call Centers, Telecommunications Review, 1998..
  • HSE Web site at www.hse.gov.uk/lau/lacs/94-1.htm for guidelines about call centre working practices.
  • Fluss, Donna, "The Real-Time Contact Center", 2005 AMACOM


    • de:Callcenteres:Centro de llamadasfr:Centre d'appelia:Centro de appellarit:Call centernl:Callcenterja:コールセンターpl:Call centerpt:Central de atendimentoru:Call-центрыsv:Callcenter



     

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