What Is A Call Center For Businesses?

While the internet has made it easier for businesses to connect with customers beyond the landline phone, many businesses still rely heavily on telephony. If you have a heavy inflow and outflow of phone calls, maybe it’s time to consider a call center for your business.

Modern technology has made it easier and more affordable than ever to have a call center to field incoming and outgoing calls for your business. In this post, we’re going to look at what a call center is, what duties call center agents can tackle, and how you can get started with a call center for your business.

What Is A Call Center?

A call center is a department within an organization that handles incoming and outgoing calls. Call centers can be remote or located on-site.

A call center can provide information to inbound callers for things like account balances, pricing plans, general info on products and services, or offer customer support.

A call center can also make outbound calls as needed for things like payment reminders or for marketing new products and services.

Call centers free up other employees to focus on other tasks instead of being interrupted by phone calls.

Call Centers VS Contact Centers

A call center handles inbound and outbound phone calls. A contact center, on the other hand, tackles communications through other channels.

In addition to answering phones and making calls to customers, agents at a contact center may engage in live chat with customers, send SMS/MMS messages, send and reply to emails, and use other communication tools to connect with customers.

What Does A Call Center Do?

We’ve already briefly described a few duties that are handled by agents at a call center. However, here’s a more detailed overview of everything that a call center can do for a business.

• Answer Inbound Phone Calls: Call centers answer inbound phone calls to assist customers and answer questions covering everything from business hours and location to the pricing of products and services.
• Offer Customer Support: If a customer has an issue with a product or service, call centers can provide customer support or escalate the call to someone who can offer personalized assistance.
• Escalate Issues: As mentioned above, call centers can escalate customer issues as needed. If a caller is irate or the agent is unable to answer a question, this call can be pushed to a manager or another employee who can handle the issue effectively.
• Manage Customer Database: Call center agents can maintain a customer database to ensure that information like names, billing addresses, and payment information is always kept up to date.
• Process Orders: Some businesses allow customers to place an order by phone. In these instances, call center agents can place and process the order.
• Process Customer Payments: If a customer is making a payment by phone or ordering a new product or service, agents can process these payments.
• Sell, Upsell, & Cross-Sell Products/Services: Call center agents can sell products or services, upsell, or recommend additional products and services to current and prospective customers.
• Do Market Research: Call centers can perform market research to find out current trends and gather data that can be used to make important decisions in the future.
• Get Customer Feedback: Call center agents can use inbound or outbound calling to solicit customer feedback. This feedback can help business owners determine where the business shines — and where improvements need to be made.

While these are some of the duties that can be managed with a call center, note that you don’t have to implement all of these within your own business. For example, you may just want to have a dedicated call center available to provide customer support or to make sales.

How To Start A Call Center

There are a few ways to start a call center. While we won’t go into too much detail here, this will provide you with an overview of the options available to your business.

In-House Call Centers

An in-house call center is a dedicated call center located within your business. While you have greater control with this option, costs are often significantly higher, as you will have to plan for dedicated space, employees, training, infrastructure, equipment, and other expenses.

The trade-off is that you can ensure the highest level of service is provided, implement security measures to protect customer data, and make sure that your values and branding are reflected in the service that is provided.

Outsourced Call Centers

You can cut costs with an outsourced call center. Another provider will be responsible for things like infrastructure, equipment, and employee training. This can significantly cut down on your time and money investments.

The downside is that you have less control, security risks may be a factor, and service may not be as personalized as with an in-house center.

Remote/Virtual Call Centers

Remote call centers don’t require the dedicated space, infrastructure, or equipment needed for an in-house center. Businesses can use VoIP phone systems to allow employees to accept and receive calls with any type of internet-connected device (including smartphones and computers).

Remote employees can work from anywhere (provided, of course, that there’s access to a reliable internet connection). While you will have to pay employees and offer training, VoIP also has advanced features that can be used to easily monitor and train employees to provide a high level of customer service.

Remote call centers with VoIP phone systems can also be used as contact centers for sending and responding to emails, marketing through text messages, providing support through website live chat, and otherwise communicating with customers and collaborating with other employees.

The Bottom Line On Call Centers

A call center isn’t for every business. If you only receive a few calls per week to answer basic questions, hiring and training employees, investing in equipment, and taking the time to create protocols and guidelines is a waste of resources.

On the other hand, if your business receives lots of phone calls, makes sales, conducts transactions over the phone, and uses the phone for market research or to collect customer feedback, a call center may be something worth considering.

Although you will have to invest some time and money, the best VoIP business phone systems make it easy to set up a call center from anywhere without requiring extensive infrastructure. These systems are also easily scalable to provide the service and features you need for a growing business.