CHAPTER 6- CALL CENTER

Introduction-
Call center is a place where calls are either made or received in a high volume by 100s of
call center agents sitting together in a large group. The purposes are-
 Sales
 Marketing
 Telemarketing
 Customer service
 Technical support
 Specialized business activity
The set up can be considered as one of the following-
• Huge telemarketing center
• Customer service center
• Help line
• Service bureau
• Outsourcer
Earlier call center was defined as a place where various business transaction were
handled through telephone that used to combine centrally located through telephone that
used to combine centrally located database with an automatic call distribution [ACD]
system.
An agent in a call center means a staff/person who is working in a call center. By seats,
we mean number f people working together at any given time.

Classification of call centers-

The call center can be classified as follows-
Inbound- It specializes in handling calls from customer. The agents of inbound call center
are supposed to handle customer queries. No calls are made to the customer in an
inbound call center. This type of call center is more common in customer care where they
are supposed to have facility of toll free number through which customer can call for
making queries.
Outbound- Outbound call centers are those call centers from where the calls are made to
the customer either for business transaction or for responding quires made. It can be
further divided into two parts i.e. business to business (B2B) and business to customer
(B2C). The main utility f an outbound call center is collecting finances from customer or
parties. The other utilizations are being telemarketing, teleselling etc.
Domestic call center- It relates to geographical and political boundaries of customers call
center is catering to. Such call centers are independent of certain key factors like time
zone, laws, culture, spoken language etc. the problems faced by call center agents are
relatively small. These call centers generally do not have 24*7 working hours because
they operate inside their respective time zones.
International call center- If a call center is making/receiving calls from outside political
boundary it is said to be an international call center. These call centers are dependent on
key factors mentioned above. Agents in an international call center are expected to be
highly trained professionals. They have 24*7 services. The agents mostly work in shifts.
In-house call center- A company which owns certain products/services sets up its own
call center to provide a helpline to its customers. Such a call center is termed as in-house
call center.
Outsourced call center- If a company hires a call center to service its customers, then the
call center is called as outsourced call center.

Technological aspects of call center-

• Headsets- Headsets are the key ingredients of a call center. They provide hand
free operation for the agents letting them type faster, talk on the phone longer.
• ACD (automatic call distributor)
It is linked to everything that goes in the call center. It’s basic function is to take
incoming calls and take them to right desk, i.e. customer’s desk.
Basic ACD system process the received telephone calls on first come first serve
basis. The system typically answers each call instantaneously and if needed hold
in a queue till it is directed to agent. Many ACD software like PACER handle
multiple queues and keep records of calls and depending on the user defined
business rules, ACD routs different callers on different paths. Moreover a call
center’s business rules may be configured as ultimate goal should be to serve
every caller quickly and efficiently to meet customer service expectations.
Salient features of ACD-
1. Flexible in call distribution- The system allows you to customize the call
handling to meet current operating requirements.
2. Call configuration- ACD directs the call either to call queue holding calls
to be handled by specific person regardless of dialed number or a call lifter
series of calls ordered on the basis of dialed numbers. On directing a call
to call lifter, call center manager programs on how call is to be handled
while it is waiting.
3. Agents- The serving team specifies the type of the call to be handled by
the agent.
4. Heavy traffic handling- ACD is a control point for call centers and is
capable of handling calls at the rate and volume not only far beyond
human capabilities bur also beyond any other telecom switching system.
5. Best utilization of human resources- Using ACD assures that your human
resources are used more efficiently.
6. Call queuing facility- ACD provides special services to all customers
making them feel special. All calls that are in a queue are made available
to respective agent if he is free else the customer is kept waiting in a
queue. While in queue, delay treatment is provided to keep caller online.
7. Call origin display- Different types of calls each with its own call origin
display can be directed to the same queue.
8. Call mapping- Incoming calls are resident to a call class and are mapped
to a queue. By creating a queue mapping definition, different teams can be
assigned to service a queue at various times through the day.
9. Interflow- An ACD helps to reroute the calls automatically to another call
center if traffic encounters some conditions. Using an ACD system,
 automatically routes the queued calls to back up teams during heavy
traffic periods.
10. Skilled routing- Skilled routing directs the caller to the agent with proper
skills to meet needs of caller.
Importance of ACD-
Power- Nothing has more raw call processing ability than a standalone ACD. It is best
suited to today’s requirements.
Technology- All factors mentioned above are to be considered.

Interactive Voice Response [IVR] –

It is an automated system for collecting customer’s information. It is like any other
computer system that helps the caller to get the desired information by way of asking
questions. The information is either entered through telephone keypad or voice. They
caller then gets some kind of information back from computer system through digitized
or pre-recorded voice. One can also achieve the desired information through fax machine
or website. Use of this technology helps the call centers to tackle many typical queries
which earlier required an agent to answer. Customers can retrieve virtually any sort of
information from account balances to telephone number or from weather condition to
booking a movie ticket.
Why to use IVRS?-
There are five good reasons why call center should use IVRS [interactive voice response
systems]-
• System can have access to the caller’s background information and can route the
call if necessary to relevant destination. This improves customer service.
• Accessing information through telephone lets anyone interact with the system
anywhere on the globe.
• IVRS allows companies to provide real time information on demand 24 hours a
day without human interaction.
• IVRS reduces the length of queue. This reduces waiting time for response.
• IVRS is cost effective because of number of questions it answers per unit time.

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)-

A call center has to deliver many types of interactions like fax, e-mail, web chat, voice
interaction etc. this cross media interconnection is implemented by using a technology
called as computer telephony integration. It is a way of combining data and voice
together through open connection based system. This it is all about using computers to
manage telephone calls. This integration improves upon limitation of computer and
telephone. Computer instantly receives full information about the caller and telephone
provides real time voice interaction.
Features of CTI-
a. Caller identification appears on screen form existing caller database and remains
for entire call session.
b. Called number identification is a special tool regarding number dialed by caller. It
is displayed with each incoming call.
c. We application can be automatically launched using telephone software
depending upon the data given by the phone system.
 d. Automated dialing of outgoing calls- Point and click any phone number present in
computer database and telephone will dial the call.
e. Predictive dialing and call blending- If same person handles both inbound and
outbound calls, it is called call blending.
f. Conferencing- it involves a three way communication.
g. Virtual call centers- In it, several groups of agents spread over geographic
location are treated together as single center for scheduling and call handling
purposes.
h. Intelligent call routing-
i. Online reporting- Certain CTIs include a comprehensive online reporting system
plus the ability to customize reports.
Benefits of CTI-
• Voice recognition is done either for authenticating or for message
forwarding.
• Manages voice or video conferences.
• Collects and displays pending live calls/messages left by the caller.
• Receives fax messages and routes them to appropriate fax machines.
• Based on the call input, initiates smart agent application to provide help
with caller’s request.
• Call handling time is reduced by great amount. Hence overall operation is
speeded up and thus CTI is also cost effective.

Web enabling the call center-

‘Web enabling’ the call center means interacting with the customer through web. Before
web enabling the call center one has to keep in mind the following facts-
a. Though it is a technology being implemented, the customer is of much
importance i.e. resolution is the central focus of the entire process. Even while
problem resolution is the purpose, the experience has to be pleasant to the
customer which means that the customer needs as much interactive control as
possible over entire process.
b. The technology chosen should be such that it is most appropriate to business rules
of company.
c. Web enablement is time consuming , not just for functional and technical
implementation, but as far as support from personnel and increased complexity of
job is concerned, i.e. people working there should be aware of managing e-mails,
how to understand multiple channel information and use it and what appropriate
response times are. Thus not only good communication skill, but also
documentation skill and knowledge about current happenings are required.
d. One is advised to use existing tools as far as possible e.g. Siebel call center
package.
e. Plan to give higher priority treatment or some other reward to self service web
users. Encouraging that behavior is important because two things have occurred
with the use of web-
i. User is normally not interacting with live agent.
 ii. Information captured is lot more effective and hence time
consuming. So that more and more customers can be solved by self
service.
f. One should not assume that it will take place of human being. It is just an
alternative, which is valuable, useful but cannot be forced.
g. Try to implement software that will capture information well enough to constantly
improve your knowledge base.
h. Keep interfaces simple.
Now let’s look at the technology behind a phone call that is made by a customer to the
CIC [customer interaction center].
The customer makes a call to the service center for the first time. He gives the
corporate information ID, which is matched against a table that shows the customer’s
company is a gold service holder, thus providing the customer with the highest level of
service offered by the company which is running CIC. Then the individual gives name
information and is assigned a unique configuration ID that is attached to the
configuration ID of a company. Once that occurs, it will be used for recording the call, as
well as for logging and monitoring future calls.
The workflow is a very important part of the Siebel, PeopleSoft call center
operation because it handles automatic routing that is critical for timely resolution of
problems.

Automated intelligent call routing-

Intelligent inbound and outbound traffic direction is a central condition for effective CIC.
Call routing gets difficult when e-mail, chat and web routing gets involved.
Managing this means using call-routing software that can handle increasing volumes,
geographical dispersion of the call center representatives (CCRs), multiple channels and
workflow. Typically it would identify who is calling and why, use the customer database
to identify the history, and then find the appropriate party who is available at the time the
caller calls. The software should have grated IVR so that some of the processes can be
routed to automatic responses. It should have CTI to capture the information and use the
databases effectively. Its distribution should be multichannel, which means an open
architecture. It should be easily scalable, since call volume will vary widely between
companies, times of day, year and months. It should be able to capture real time data on
the customer and use it in conjunction with the historical data on the customer that exists
in the customer data repository. It should be web-enabled so that web-based routing to
the appropriate menus can occur and so that the information given is easily captured and
centrally stored. It should allow live collaboration on the web. It should provide remote
agent support so that branch offices and small office/small agents can be utilized in the
problem resolution. This means that the home agent and the branch offices can access
most of the functionality that is provided to the headquarter agent. The software should
have strong scripting capabilities and an open interface. This means the interface can
control IVR scripting that is governed by applied business rules. It should also integrate
workforce management tools with its call-routing capacity so that the CIC’s agent
capacity and scheduling forecasts can be integrated into the use of the call-routing
functionality in micro specific ways.
Workforce management software-
It lies on the top of the call-routing software. The two features that are most important are
call volume forecasts and agent scheduling. Equally as important is sophisticated pattern
recognition (more precisely pattern recognition anomalies). Logging and monitoring are
also part or workforce management.
The channels of communication are vastly expanded since 1990s and the factors that
morphed the call center into a customer interaction center are at play in workforce
management, too. The functionality behind the forecasting and agent scheduling also
includes reporting, what-if scenario planning, and compliance with rules and regulations.
Other features can include comparison between the forecasts and the results, and most
importantly, multisite support. The most important part of this is done via multiple
communication media.

Logging and monitoring-

Logging and monitoring software provides the granularity needed to do precision
scheduling and improve performance management. Besides such obvious things as
collecting information that is based on caller IDs of some sort, there are several other
features that good logging and monitoring software has-
• The means to develop criteria to capture appropriate samples across the entire
CIC network.
• Extensive and very flexible reporting tools
• Universal connectivity to ACD systems
• Strong interfacing with the WFM applications
• Analytic tools that can score data so that weight can be assigned to captured
information
• Easy export to other systems
One company that specializes in the performance management domain is e-talk
Corporation. They provide some of the most comprehensive logging and monitoring
tools in the business and have four applications. The two those are apt for this usage
are-
Recorder- Enables customer contact centers to record and evaluate customer
interactions simultaneously through telephone, email and web interaction. It even
allows for live monitoring and recording sessions. What makes this particularly
powerful is a deep search engine that can provide call selections based on any
number of criteria. Recorder can be accessed from a touchtone phone.
Advisor- A tool that measures agent or agent group performance. It imports
productivity data from ACD of the company and other business systems and
combines with the quality criteria of the company to give it a complete picture of
agent’s performance. This is a web-based evaluation tool.