Call Center process

Call center is a centralized office of a company that answers incoming telephone calls from customers, and makes outgoing telephone calls to customers (telemarketing).

Diverse ranges of businesses use call centers to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software.

How call center works:

1. Incoming call center management is the art of having the right number of skilled people and supporting resources in place at the right times to handle an accurately forecasted workload, at service level and with quality.

2. Representatives management, If you have too few representatives on duty, queues get long (service level goes down), more circuits are needed, and customers get frustrated, sometimes abandoning the call. If you have too many representatives on duty, you spend too much paying for them to wait.

3. Be ready with plans for unexpected load.

4. A service level is defined as "X percent of calls answered in Y seconds", not as "X percent answered" or "Average Speed of Answer". Abandonment rates matter, too, but fixing abandonment problems usually means fixing service levels.

5. A good forecasted call load-including talk time, after-call work, and volume--is critical for budgeting people and circuits. Often, a good forecast should predict load by the half hour, using previous data, knowledge of upcoming plans, and good judgment.

6. To determine staffing needs.

7. More staff, less waiting, fewer phone lines for people on hold. Less staff, more waiting, more phone lines. Formulas exist for phone lines, too.

8. Not everyone scheduled is always working on customer service, Schedule accordingly. Be clever about work schedules to get the right number working at the right time. Service level results tell you whether you got it right.

9. Give senior managers good reports, but make sure they understand the points above.

10. There are lots of tools and graphs to measure aspects of quality. Use them to identify root causes, not beat your employees. Representatives should adhere to schedules, and do good work. Use monitoring capabilities to coach. Measuring based on "calls per hour" is unreliable, and invites cheating.

11. Customers are getting more demanding, automated systems are taking the easy calls, so representatives have to be better trained and more skilled.

12. Create a good environment that uses technology well.

Posted by: Sales & Marketing Team

Call Centers India Inc.

http://www.callcentersindia.com